Re: Why does the minibuffer get updated

[Decebal]

On Jan 16, 4:36 am, Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article
> <726d8899-cdb6-45a8-a30d-8ce27270c...@f40g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
>
>
>
>  Decebal <CLDWester...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I like to have a wordcount displayed. I tried it with the following:
> >     (defun buffer-count-words()
> >       (interactive)
> >       (let ((occurences
> >              (how-many "\\w+" (point-min) (point-max))
> >              )
> >             )
> >         (string-match "[0-9]*" occurences)
> >         (match-string 0 occurences)
> >         )
> >       )
>
> >     (defvar buffer-count-words
> >       nil
> >       "*Number of words in the buffer."
> >       )
>
> >     (defun buffer-update-word-count()
> >       (interactive)
> >       (setq buffer-count-words (buffer-count-words))
> >       (force-mode-line-update)
> >       )
>
> >     (unless buffer-count-words
> >       (run-with-idle-timer 1 t 'buffer-update-word-count)
> >       )
>
> >     (unless (memq 'buffer-count-words global-mode-string)
> >       (add-to-list 'global-mode-string " words: " t)
> >       (add-to-list 'global-mode-string 'buffer-count-words t)
> >       )
>
> > This does display the word count, but also keeps putting in the
> > minibuffer '<NUMBER> occurences'.
> > What am I doing wrong?
>
> It's presumably coming from the how-many function, although my
> documentation says that it only displays the number if the fourth
> argument "interactive" is t.  What version of Emacs are you running?

At the moment I am working with:
    GNU Emacs 21.3.1 (i586-suse-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll
bars) of 2008-05-16 on hammer3

And it is also in this one going wrong.

I tried to add nil:
         (how-many "\\w+" (point-min) (point-max) nil)

Nothing is displayed in the echo area (it is not the minibuffer I
learned), but there is also nothing displayed after 'words: ' in the
status bar. So that is not a solution.