UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi all, i'm trying to do this exercise, i want to create a script that can substitute WC command in unix, can someone help me?

Hello Marina,

Here is the simple example for counting the lines.
Lets say we have a test file in which we have 2309 lines.

Code:

$ cat test.ksh
i=0
while read line
do
let "i = i +1"
 
done < "test"
echo "lines in file are:"$i
$

Actual comand will also give same lines only as follows.

Code:

$ cat test | wc -l
2309

Thanks,
R. Singh

with awk

Code:

awk 'END{print NR}' file

shell doesn't recognize let command

Please try the following code now it should work.

Code:

$ cat test.ksh
i=0
one=1
while read line
do
i= $(($i + $one)) 
done < "test"
echo "lines in file are:"$i
$

Thanks,
R. Singh

now it works, thank you

Ignoring the space following the assignment operator in line 5, this script is still buggy. Any text file with lines ending in a backslash will be counted incorrectly.

If for some reason wc cannot be used (this thread smells like homework, so I am not providing any specifics), a tiny (just a few characters) sed script can count the number of lines. No need for a comparitively long-winded shell script.

Regards,
Alister