The Words(s) command splits a string into its constituent words. A list of the words in the input string s, in order, is returned. The non-word characters in the string are elided from the output.

The WordCount(s) command counts the number of words in a given string s.

A word is defined to be a maximal contiguous sequence of alphanumeric characters or the apostrophe character ('). Words are delimited by non-word characters.

All of the StringTools package commands treat strings as (null-terminated) sequences of $8$-bit (ASCII) characters.  Thus, there is no support for multibyte character encodings, such as unicode encodings.

$\mathrm{with}\left(\mathrm{StringTools}\right)\:$

$\mathrm{Words}\left(''This\; is\; a\backslash nsentence.''\right)$

$\left[''This''\,''is''\,''a''\,''sentence''\right]$

$\mathrm{WordCount}\left(''This\; is\; a\backslash nsentence.''\right)$

$4$

$\mathrm{Words}\left(''The\; Word\; command\; correctly\; parses\; a\; word\; with\; an\; apostrophe,\; like\; isn\text{'}t,\; as\; a\; single\; word.''\right)$

$\left[''The''\,''Word''\,''command''\,''correctly''\,''parses''\,''a''\,''word''\,''with''\,''an''\,''apostrophe''\,''like''\,''isn\text{'}t''\,''as''\,''a''\,''single''\,''word''\right]$

$\mathrm{WordCount}\left(''The\; WordCount\; command\; correctly\; counts\; a\; word\; with\; an\; apostrophe,\; like\; isn\text{'}t,\; as\; a\; single\; word.''\right)$

$16$

$\mathrm{Words}\left(''The\; Words\; command\; ignores\; punctuation,\; like\; colons\; (:);\; this\; is\; very\; useful!''\right)$

$\left[''The''\,''Words''\,''command''\,''ignores''\,''punctuation''\,''like''\,''colons''\,''this''\,''is''\,''very''\,''useful''\right]$

$\mathrm{WordCount}\left(''The\; WordCount\; command\; also\; ignores\; punctuation,\; like\; colons\; (:);\; this\; is\; very\; useful!''\right)$

$12$