Theoretically there is no limit on the size of an input file, but in practice (due to processing time needed) there is a limit of about 10 Mb on text files (and text-like files such as XML and HTML files). There is also a limit of about 10 Mb on the amount of text in an MS Word DOCX file, though a DOCX file can be much larger than this if it contains many images.

Counting Phrases in a Single File

The number of phrases in a piece of text is approximately the square of the number of words in that text. Thus text longer than 50 words contains thousands of phrases. So when counting phrases it is necessary to limit the length of a phrase. It may also be helpful to exclude phrases which are of no interest, in particular phrases consisting entirely of words which are of no interest. In this software, words which are of no interest are called words to ignore (or in the terminology of linguists, stop words), such as the, that, he, on, about, etc. This software comes with words-to-ignore files for several languages. So when the program starts up it may ask whether you wish to load the words-to-ignore file for English (or some other language). If not, you can load such a file via the Settings panel. You can also specify extra words to ignore with particular documents.

This software comes in two versions: Hermetic Word Frequency Counter (WFC) and Hermetic Word Frequency Counter Advanced Version (WFCA).  These are two separate programs. The main difference is that WFC counts words only in single DOCX, text and text-like files (including HTML and XML files), whereas WFCA counts words and phrases in multiple files (in multiple folders) in a single operation. If you need to count words in only one file at a time then WFC is what you need. (Click on this link for the WFC page.) If you have many files or wish to count phrases or need more options and functionality for words and phrases) then you need WFCA (so read on).

Theoretically there is no limit on the size of an input file or the number of words in it, but in practice (due to processing time needed) there is a limit of about 10 Mb on text files (and text-like files such as XML and HTML files). There is also a limit of about 10 Mb on the amount of text in an MS Word DOCX file (though a DOCX file can be larger than this if it contains many images). For a DOCX file, only words in the body of the document are counted, not words in footnotes or endnotes.

The Advanced Version does everything that the basic version does, including support for UTF-8 encoded text. The section below details the additional functionality of the Advanced Version, mainly, the ability to count words in multiple files, the ability to count phrases as well as words, and the ability to count occurrences of a word or a phrase which matches a specified pattern (so it is also a multiple-file search program). Thus the user manual for the basic version should be read in conjunction with this page.