how to find and count the words in a string?

[eluser]basty_dread[/eluser]
wow thank you..
thanks for the reply guys..


How about this: i have a ckeditor.. and i want to count all the words in the ckeditor.. i used this code:

Code:

$vContent = "<h1 style="text-align: center;">
    <span style="font-family: comic sans ms,cursive;">reverse osmosis<br />
    </span></h1>";

$count = count(explode(" ", $vContent));

but my problem is it also counts the html tags. what should i do?
thank you for helping.