Module:NUMBEROFSECTIONS/sandbox

 localp={}

 -- Counting function accepting a string haystack and table of needles
 localfunctioncount(haystack,needles)
 localnumber=0
 -- While we have needles to look for
 forindex,needleinipairs(needles)do
 -- find them all in our haystack
 forminstring.gmatch(haystack,needle)do
 number=number+1
 end
 end
 returnnumber
 end

 -- Function takes any number of # delimited page names and section level numbers
 functionp.sections(frame)
 localtotal=0
 localneedles={}
 localhaystack=''
 -- Separate page names from # delimited string into table
 localpages=mw.text.split(frame.args[1],'%s?#%s?')
 -- Separate whitespace delimited section level numbers into table
 locallevels=mw.text.split(frame.args['level'],'%s*')
 -- Iterate through levels
 forlevelinmw.text.gsplit(table.concat(levels),'')do
 -- and add the level needle to needles
 needles[#needles+1]='\n'..string.rep('=',tonumber(level))..'[^=]'
 end
 -- For each page name in pages
 forindex,pageinipairs(pages)do
 -- create a haystack to search from the page content
 haystack=mw.title.new(page):getContent()
 -- If we've requested the content of a legitimate page
 ifhaystackthen
 --[[ pass the raw markup and needles to count
 				 and add the return to total ]]
 total=total+count(haystack,needles)
 end
 end
 --[[ then return how many sections of the required level
 		 are in all the pages passed ]]
 returntotal
 end

 returnp