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Shell Programming and Scripting

Issue with WC command

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# 1  
Old 09-10-2010
Issue with WC command
I am trying to show out the character count of a file if greater than 500 characters. When I do the -m its show the size of the file and not the characters in the file. Where am I getting confused? Or is -c and -m the same thing? Code is below

Code:
     if [ $(wc -m <$F) > 500 ];
        then
            echo "Char count: $(wc -m <$F)"
            echo "File $F has more than 500 Characters!"
            exit
        fi

# 2  
Old 09-10-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by tvb2727
I am trying to show out the character count of a file if greater than 500 characters. When I do the -m its show the size of the file and not the characters in the file. Where am I getting confused? Or is -c and -m the same thing? Code is below

Code:
     if [ "$(wc -m <$F)" -gt 500 ];
        then
            echo "Char count: $(wc -m <$F)"
            echo "File $F has more than 500 Characters!"
            exit
        fi

I think you were actually writing the result to the file "500".

There's no need to run wc twice. The wasted time of running extra processes like that adds up real fast.

Code:
COUNT="$(wc -m < "$F")"
[ "$COUNT" -gt 500 ] && echo "File $F has $COUNT characters"

# 3  
Old 09-10-2010
okay, i added your code, but the # i get is still the size of the file. I guess that makes sense though. Bytes(size of the file) and characters are the exact same thing. So why would they make 2 different commands?
# 4  
Old 09-10-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by tvb2727
okay, i added your code, but the # i get is still the size of the file. I guess that makes sense though. Bytes(size of the file) and characters are the exact same thing. So why would they make 2 different commands?
It depends what encoding is used to create that file. With ASCII files it is true. (1 character = 1 byte). With Unicode it is a bit more complicated Smilie
Code:
[bart@linux awk]$ file a
a: UTF-8 Unicode text
[bart@linux awk]$ wc -m a
1205 a
[bart@linux awk]$ wc -c a
1207 a
[bart@linux awk]$

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