wc

Examples (TL;DR)

• Count lines in file: wc -l file
• Count words in file: wc -w file
• Count characters (bytes) in file: wc -c file
• Count characters in file (taking multi-byte character sets into account): wc -m file

tldr.sh

Synopsis

wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...
wc [OPTION]... --files0-from=F

Description

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line if more than one FILE is specified.  A word is a non-zero-length sequence of characters delimited by white space.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

The options below may be used to select which counts are printed, always in the following order: newline, word, character, byte, maximum line length.

-c, --bytes

print the byte counts

-m, --chars

print the character counts

-l, --lines

print the newline counts

--files0-from=F

read input from the files specified by NUL-terminated names in file F; If F is - then read names from standard input

-L, --max-line-length

print the maximum display width

-w, --words

print the word counts

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Author

Written by Paul Rubin and David MacKenzie.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

See Also

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/wc>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) wc invocation'

Referenced By

bridge(8), flowdumper(1), gc(1), ip(8), nop(1), rc(1), tc(8), xs(1).