Btw, you can avoid the grep in hg using a simple template:

    hg log --user "Shawn Smith" --template "{rev}:{author}\n" | wc -l

Of course, hg output is also meant to be parseable, so there's nothing wrong with grepping. I just wanted to talk about the awesomeness of hg templates. :-)

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/GenericTemplatingPlan

Edit: Oh, oh, and another way to count without even using wc -l, using the churn extension and a revset!

   hg --config extensions.churn= churn -r "user('Shawn Smith')" -c

Naturally, if you enable the churn extension in your ~/.hgrc, this is just

    hg churn -r "user('Shawn Smith')" -c

Mercurial is a very cool DVCS, and it makes me very happy, and its features need to be more frequently talked about. :-)