wc(1)							      General Commands Manual							     wc(1)

NAME

       wc - Counts the lines, words, characters, and bytes in a file

SYNOPSIS

       wc [-c  | -m] [-lw] [file...]

       The  wc	command  counts the lines, words, and characters or bytes in a file, or in the standard input if you do not specify any files, and
       writes the results to standard output. It also keeps a total count for all named files.

STANDARDS

       Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows:

       wc:  XCU5.0

       Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags.

OPTIONS

       Counts bytes in the input.  Counts lines in the input.  Counts characters in the input.	Counts words in the input.

OPERANDS

       Specifies the pathname of the input file.  If this operand is omitted, standard input is used.

DESCRIPTION

       A word is defined as a string of characters delimited by white space as defined in the X/Open Base Definitions for XCU4.

       The wc command counts lines, words, and bytes by default.  Use the appropriate options to limit wc output.  Specifying wc  without  options
       is the equivalent of specifying wc -lwc.  If any options are specified, only the requested information is output.

       The  order  in which counts appear in the output line is lines, words, bytes.  If an option is omitted, then the corresponding field in the
       output is omitted.  If the -m option is used, then character counts replace byte counts.

       When you specify one or more files, wc displays the names of the files along with the counts.  If standard input is used, then no file name
       is displayed.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned: Successful completion.  An error occurred.

EXAMPLES

       To display the number of lines, words, and bytes in the file text, enter: wc text

	      This results in the following output: 27 185 722 text

	      The  numbers 27, 185, and 722 are the number of lines, words, and bytes, respectively, in the file text.	To display only one or two
	      of the three counts include the appropriate options. For example, the following command displays only line and byte counts:  wc  -cl
	      text

	      27  722  text  To count lines, words, and bytes in more than one file, use wc with more than one input file or with a file name pat-
	      tern.  For example, the following command can be issued in a directory containing the files text, text1, and text2: wc -l text*

	      27   text 112  text1 5	text2 144  total

	      The numbers 27, 112, and 5 are the numbers of lines in the files text, text1, and text2, respectively, and 144 is the  total  number
	      of  lines  in  the  three files.	The file name is always appended to the output.  To obtain a pure number for things like reporting
	      purposes, pipe all input to the wc command using cat.  For example, the following command will report the total count of	characters
	      in all files in a directory.  echo There are `cat *.c | wc -c` characters in *.c files

	      There are 1869 characters in *.c files

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The  following  environment  variables affect the execution of wc: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are
       unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used.  If any of the internationalization vari-
       ables  contain  an  invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined.  If set to a non-empty string value,
       overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables.  Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences  of  bytes
       of  text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments and input files) and which characters
       are defined as white space characters.  Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard  error
       and informative messages written to standard output.  Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.

SEE ALSO

       Commands:  cksum(1), ls(1)

       Standards:  standards(5)

																	     wc(1)