+1  A: 

Search the textarea for "\n".

To be certain, do a regex search for pattern "\\n" and count the matches array, that will be the linebreak count.

cypher
+1  A: 

Utilize the String split function...

var text = $('#total-number').text();
var eachLine = text.split('\n');

alert('Lines found: ' + eachLine.length);

for(var i = 0, l = eachLine.length; i < l; i++) {
  alert('Line ' + (i+1) + ': ' + eachLine[i]);
}
Josh Stodola
A: 

Using regular expressions, your problem can be solved like this (searching the textarea for the new line character "\n")):

//assuming $('#total-number') is your textarea element
var text = $('#total-number').val();
// look for any "\n" occurences
var matches = text.match(/\n/g);
// count them, if there are any
var breaks = matches ? matches.length : 0;

breaks variable now contains number of line breaks in the text.

Martin Tóth