Command output is given to the console. As in the following case -

wc -l filename
produces following output
nn filename

From this, I am only interested with nn(rowcount). Cant we simply extract it thr console?

I also tried with null device, I know as - /dev/null

wc -l filename > /dev/null | cut -d " " -f 1 /dev/null

This also didnt help me.

Will I have to use temporary file, in order to retrieve only rowcount?