Function to return number of words in a string?

Hiya-

I'm looking for a function to return the number of words in a string,
split on whitespace.  I'm coming from python, so I may just write it in
that but I wanted to check first.  In python, one would write:

s="some string or other"
len(s.split())

Thanks!

--
Peter Fein                 pfein@pobox.com                 773-575-0694

Basically, if you're not a utopianist, you're a schmuck. -J. Feldman