wc(1)wc(1)NAMEwc - Counts the lines, words, characters, and bytes in a file
SYNOPSISwc [-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 stan‐
dards 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 charac‐
ters 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
pattern. 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 num‐
ber 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: Pro‐
vides 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, over‐
rides 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 multi‐
byte characters in arguments and input files) and which characters are
defined as white space characters. Determines the locale for the for‐
mat and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error and
informative messages written to standard output. Determines the loca‐
tion of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
SEE ALSO
Commands: cksum(1), ls(1)
Standards: standards(5)wc(1)
