Imports System
Imports System.Linq
Class Program
Public Shared Sub Main()
Dim s As String = "python! ,,c, c++. c# $$$java@# php."
Dim punctuation As Char() = "!""#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~".ToCharArray()
Dim result As Integer = s.Split(" "c, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(Function(word) word.Trim(punctuation)).Count(Function(clean) clean.All(AddressOf Char.IsLetter))
Console.WriteLine(result)
End Sub
End Class
' run:
'
' 6
'