# Forum:Number of articles

hi!
please forgive my newbie-ness, but i'm have trouble with what should be something simple...
on the main page, it says, "we have 2,002 articles". when i click the 2,002, it takes me to http://wikistats.wikia.com/EN/TablesWikiaNETHACK.htm, which is a 404 not found page.
i then ended up finding the xml files at http://wikistats.wikia.com/n/ne/nethack/ but do not know how to parse them (using linux command line tools) to distinguish what makes an article versus something else (i realize the xml file is a bit older, but it still should contain around 1,980 "articles", right?)
lastly, i went to http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Special:AllPages but wasn't able to figure it out there, either. for example, what does it mean when the link is italicized? plus, it lists a lot more than 2,002 pages. (and yes, i also don't fully understand "all pages" versus "pages with prefixes").
anyway, as i said, it should be something simple... i'd just like a listing of those 2,002 articles. any help?
thanks,
ryan

Italized links are redirects. The reason there are many more than 2002 pages is because many special types of pages are not included. Any talk pages, forum posts, redirects, and the like are not included in that count.
If you want to parse that XML, you'll likely need to use a programming language, not just Linux shell commands. Perl or Python should probably work well. -- Qazmlpok 18:59, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

hey Qazmlpok,
thanks for the quick reply. and ya, i figured i was getting in over my head when i started playing with the xml file. i was just hoping to scan the list to see which articles i've read &amp; which ones i've missed. maybe if i wasn't so busy playing nethack, i'd teach myself some more useful computing skills&nbsp;:)
ryan