PHP - Count total words in a regex pattern -

take following php regular expression:

/^(what is|tell me) name$/

i want determine total number of available words within pattern. correct answer 4 seeing following combinations compatible:

what name => 4 words tell me name => 4 words 

a simple count(explode(' ', '/^(what is|tell me) name$/')) not going cut it, seeing explode function return following:

['/^(what', 'is|tell', 'me)', 'your', 'name$/']

...which defines 5 "words", when really, 4 available within pattern.

here's example:

/^(my|the) name (\w+)$/ => 4 words

is there function available can utilise, or have create tech 1 scratch?

kudos if anyone's willing give shot.

this extremely ugly, maybe can use of logic? seams work.

i basicly split string 2 different strings. $first_string part between parentheses (). explode string on | , count whitespaces in new string +1.

the second part of string $second_string strip out non alphabetic chars , double whitespaces , count words.

finaly add $first_string + $second_string final result.

one weakness if have string (something | else), don't think method of counting whitespaces can handle different amounts of words on each site of |.

<?php      $string='/^(my|the) name (\w+)$/';     $pattern='/\(([^\)]+)\)/'; // text between ()     $pattern2 = '([^a-za-z0-9 $])'; // non alphabetic chars except $      preg_match($pattern,$string, $first_string); // text     $first_string=explode('|', $first_string[0]);       $new_string = preg_replace($pattern, '', $string);     $new_string2 = preg_replace($pattern2, '', $new_string);     $new_string2 = removewhitespace($new_string2);      // count words     $first_string=substr_count($first_string[0]," ")+1;     $second_string = sizeof(explode(" ", $new_string2)); // count words      // removes double white space     function removewhitespace($text)     {         $text = preg_replace('/[\t\n\r\0\x0b]/', '', $text);         $text = preg_replace('/([\s])\1+/', ' ', $text);         $text = trim($text);         return $text;     }      echo $first_string+$second_string; // final result   ?>