The "wc" Utility
July 19, 1998
The "wc" utility is used to count the number
of words, characters or lines in a file and includes several
useful options.
| Option |
Explanation |
| -c |
Counts only characters |
| -l |
Counts only the number of lines (newline delimited) |
| -w |
Counts words only (defined as separated by a tab, space or
newline) |
Consider these examples of options in use
![[wc Example]](Images/wc.gif)
Another cool way to use "wc" is to count the number of
files in a directory by piping the output of "ls" to "wc" such as:
ls -l | wc -l
Finally, as with other commands, you can use the back tick (`)
character to perform command substitution. Thus, the following
command will count the number of files in the current directory and
the one just above it. (Note you may have to subtract any header
lines depending on your version of "ls" as in the version shown below
in which we need to extract the lines total 5 and total 8)
expr `ls -l | wc -l` + `ls -l .. | wc -l`
![[wc Complex Example]](Images/wc_complex.gif)
The "spell" Utility
Introduction to UNIX for Web Developers | Table of Contents
The "cut" Utility
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