[O] Get counting of items

[Martin Gross]

Dear helpers,

I would like to get a counting of the first level items in a buffer
(or even better in a region).  Since I‘m not a programmer I tried
this, which doesn‘t work:

(defun org-items-counting ()
  "Print a message with the counting of the first level outline items
in the current buffer"
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
     (goto-char (point-min))
     (message "Counting of first level outline items: %d"
(count-matches "\n* "))))

Probably there is a very much better approaching to this problem.
Could please somebody help me?

Thanks in advance,

Martin