WC(1)

NAME

wc − word, line, and character count

SYNOPSIS

wc [ −lwc ] [ names ]

HP-UX COMPATIBILITY

Level: HP-UX/STANDARD

Origin: System V

Native Language Support:
8−bit data, customs, messages.

DESCRIPTION

Wc counts lines, words, and characters in the named files, or in the standard input if no names appear. It also keeps a total count for all named files. A word is a maximal string of characters delimited by spaces, tabs, or new-lines.

The options l, w, and c may be used in any combination to specify that a subset of lines, words, and characters are to be reported. The default is −lwc.

When names are specified on the command line, they will be printed along with the counts.

BUGS

Wc counts the number of new-lines to determine the line count. If an ASCII text file has a final line that is not terminated with a new-line character, the count will be off by one.

If there are very many characters, words, and/or lines in an input file, the output may be hard to read. This is because wc reserves a fixed column width for each count.