Optimizing a text statistics function

[Nickolay Kolev]

Peter Otten wrote:

Thanks for taking the time to rewrite the whole thing. I will try to 
work through it as I do not understand what you are doing most of the 
time there.

> Speed is not that important most of the time.

Agreed. I am not looking for a magical solution that will shave some 
time off at the price of using things I do not understand and/or are not 
readable.

> You might consider switching to 4-space indent.

Not wanting to start a flame here (this is probably a much discussed 
topic): why? I write in VIM and use tabs. The default representation 
width of the tab char there is 8 spaces. If I do get many, many nested 
blocks, I could just set it to a lower width, no?

Nicky