Linux and UNIX Man Pages

Linux & Unix Commands - Search Man Pages

wc(1) [v7 man page]

WC(1)							      General Commands Manual							     WC(1)

NAME
wc - word count SYNOPSIS
wc [ -lwc ] [ name ... ] DESCRIPTION
Wc counts lines, words and characters in the named files, or in the standard input if no name appears. A word is a maximal string of char- acters delimited by spaces, tabs or newlines. If the optional argument is present, just the specified counts (lines, words or characters) are selected by the letters l, w, or c. WC(1)

Check Out this Related Man Page

wc(1)							      General Commands Manual							     wc(1)

NAME
wc - count words, lines, and bytes or characters in a file SYNOPSIS
[file]... DESCRIPTION
The command counts lines, words, and bytes or characters in the named files, or in the standard input if no file names are specified. It also keeps a total count for all named files. A word is a string of characters delimited by spaces, tabs, or newlines. Options recognizes the following options: Report the number of bytes in each input file. Report the number of newline characters in each input file. Report the number of characters in each input file. Report the number of words in each input file. The and options are mutually exclusive. Otherwise, the and or options can be used in any combination to specify that a subset of lines, words, and bytes or characters are to be reported. When any option is specified, reports only the information requested. If no option is specified, the default output is When a file is specified on the command line, its name is printed along with the counts. Standard Output By default, the standard output contains an entry for each input file in the form: newlines words bytes file If the option is specified, the number of characters replaces the bytes field in this format. If any option is specified, the fields for the unspecified options are omitted. If no file operand is specified, neither the file name nor the preceding blank character is written. If more than one file operand is specified, an additional line is written at the end of the output, of the same format as the other lines, except that the word (in the POSIX locale) is written instead of a file name and the total of each column is written as appropriate. Under UNIX Standard environment, a word is a string of characters delimited by spaces, tabs, newline, carriage-return, vertical tab, or form-feed. RETURN VALUE
exits with one of the following values: Successful completion. An error occurred. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
For information about the UNIX Standard environment, see standards(5). Environment Variables determines the range of graphics and space characters, and the interpretation of text as single- and/or multibyte characters. determines the language in which messages are displayed. If or is not specified in the environment or is null, they default to the value of If is not specified or is null, it defaults to (see lang(5)). If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, they all default to See environ(5). International Code Set Support Single- and multibyte character code sets are supported. with a newline character, the count will be off by one. WARNINGS
The command counts the number of newlines to determine the line count. If a text file has a final line that is not terminated with a new- line character, the count will be off by one. EXAMPLES
Print the number of words and characters in The following is printed when the above command is executed: where words is the number of words and chars is the number of characters in SEE ALSO
standards(5). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
wc(1)
Man Page

15 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

wc vs ls

I had received a complaint recently that 'wc' is not returning a correct byte count for large files (in 10s of GB). Does 'wc' have any such limitation? If yes, would 'ls' be a better option to fetch file size. I am planning on replacing wc with ls for calculating file sizes in the existing code.... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: Sreenivasa
13 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

question about wc

Hey my friend was asking me if i knew a way to cout how many different words in a file. I told him no not off hand, but i was thinking about it, and i started to wonder also. I imagine this is probably pretty simple im just missing something, I keep confusing my self with how you would compair and... (16 Replies)
Discussion started by: yodadbl07
16 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

wc -l

Hi, This might be a very basic question but i am begineer with UNIX. The output of wc -l gives the line count along with the filename. $ wc -l compare_output.dat > test.dat $ more test.dat 10 compare_output.dat I just want the digit 10 in this sceniro. Can anyone plez help me on... (15 Replies)
Discussion started by: fristy_guy
15 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

ps -ef | grep java | wc -l

Hi all i have a syntax , Can some one please give me a script 1, I need to check and execute the command. ps -ef | grep java | wc -l 5 Output should me 5 if not have to run the command: ps -ef | grep java the following java process... (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: suresh_krish
11 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to display and count

Hi there, I'd like to find a way to display a string and count the words in it. supernova:~# echo 'hello world' | tee - | wc Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Any idea? Thanks in advance. Santiago (15 Replies)
Discussion started by: chebarbudo
15 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

recursive wc on a directory?

Hi all, I need to count the number of lines in all the files under a directory (several levels deep). I am feeling extremely dumb, but I don't know how to do that. Needless to say, I am not a shell script wiz... Any advice? thanks in advance! (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: bimba17
13 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Cut rowcount from one file to another

Hi guys! I need to cut first row from a file (using awk) without the record separator character (in my case its MS-DOS 0D0A) and field separator character (in my case ; 3B) and put it in another file. Can you help with that? Regards, PsmakR (18 Replies)
Discussion started by: PsmakR
18 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Alternative for wc -l

Hi techies .. This is my first posting hr .. Am facing a serious performance problem in counting the number of lines in the file. The input files i get will be in some 10 to 15 Gb of size or even sometimes more ..and I will load it to db I have used wc -l to confirm whether the loader... (14 Replies)
Discussion started by: rajesh_2383
14 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Help for a Perl newcomer! Transposing data from columns to rows

I have to create a Perl script which will transpose the data output from my experiment, from columns to rows, in order for me to analyse the data. I am a complete Perl novice so any help would be greatly appreciated. The data as it stands looks like this: Subject Condition Fp1 ... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: Sarah_W
12 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Problem with cut and wc

Hi, I am facing issue with cut and wc. here is the sample. the data in file - tail -1 05_19_BT_TBL_LOAD_20120524064242.bad|cut -c9-58 WatsSaver - AGGREGATED PLAN1581 CALLS FOR 2872.6 tail -1 05_19_BT_TBL_LOAD_20120524064242.bad|cut -c9-58|wc -c 51 tail -1... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: donadarsh
12 Replies

11. Shell Programming and Scripting

Better to Use Return Code or wc -l Output?

Hey All, Quick question... I'm writing a short script to check if a continuous port is running on a server. I'm using "ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep processName" and I was wondering if it was better/more reliable to just check the return code from the command or if its better to pipe to... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: mrm5102
12 Replies

12. Shell Programming and Scripting

Field Number read and "wc -l"

Hallo Friends, I have +/- 800K files that i need to go through. The files have extention .csv The script that i need should read field number 14 and if field number 14 is equal to 6010 or 2345 or 5690 or 8670 or 4567 then i need to know the total count. ... (17 Replies)
Discussion started by: kekanap
17 Replies

13. Shell Programming and Scripting

Strange behavior returning incorrect count

On AIX When I Run the commands below I get - cat tt11.ksh #!/bin/ksh ps -eaf |grep tt11.ksh|grep -v grep|wc -l count=`ps -eaf |grep tt11.ksh|grep -v grep|wc -l` echo "value of count is $count" Output (what I expected) ./tt11.ksh 1 value of count is 1 When I Run... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: st11669
12 Replies

14. Shell Programming and Scripting

Question on awk source files

Im repeating same command to get count, filename from 4 different files, writing to one same file. awk 'END{print NR"|"FILENAME}' file.txt >> temp.txt; awk 'END{print NR"|"FILENAME}' asdf.txt >> temp.txt; awk 'END{print NR"|"FILENAME}' lkjh.txt >> temp.txt; awk 'END{print NR"|"FILENAME}'... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: JSKOBS
12 Replies

15. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Print number of lines for files in directory, also print number of unique lines

I have a directory of files, I can show the number of lines in each file and order them from lowest to highest with: wc -l *|sort 15263 Image.txt 16401 reference.txt 40459 richtexteditor.txt How can I also print the number of unique lines in each file? 15263 1401 Image.txt 16401... (15 Replies)
Discussion started by: spacegoose
15 Replies