Get current buffer (content) size in vim script

Question

I'm using nvim v0.4.3 and am trying to apply some of the tricks + alpha (e.g. disabling substitution preview) to make editing large files faster.

I want to do that even to unnamed buffers (i.e. buffers without actual filenames), but I don't know how to get the size of the current buffer's content in vim script.

For named buffers, one can use getfsize() but it doesn't work for unnamed buffers.

g<C-g> displays the size in bytes, but I want to get the size info in vim script. It looks like getbufinfo() doesn't return the size info.

Is there any way to do it?

Thank you.

Answer 1

The wordcount() function will return statistics for the current buffer, including the total number of bytes and total number of characters.

From :help wordcount():

The result is a dictionary of byte/chars/word statistics for the current buffer. This is the same info as provided by g_CTRL-G.

The return value includes:

• bytes: Number of bytes in the buffer
• chars: Number of chars in the buffer
• etc.