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wc command in Linux with Examples
Name
wc - print newline count, word count and byte count for each file.
Synopsis
wc [OPTION]... [FILE]... wc [OPTION]... --files0-from=F
Options
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
Description
wc stands for word count is a command in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is mainly used for counting purpose.
By default it displays four-columnar output. First column shows number of lines present in a file specified, second column shows number of words present in the file, third column shows number of characters present in file and fourth column itself is the file name which are given as argument.
‘wc’ prints one line of counts for each file, and if the file was given as an argument, it prints the file name following the counts. If more than one FILE is given, ‘wc' prints a final line containing the cumulative counts, with the file name ‘total’. The counts are printed in this order: newlines, words, characters, bytes, maximum line length.
Each count is printed right-justified in a field with at least one space between fields so that the numbers and file names normally line up nicely in columns. The width of the count fields varies depending on the inputs, so you should not depend on a particular field width.
Examples
Let us consider two files having name test1.txt and test2.txt
$ cat test1.txt delhi mumbai bangalore chennai kolkata
$ cat test2.txt a) a.k. shukla b) anat hari c) barun kumar d) jai sharma e) sumit singh
1. Passing only one file name in the argument and count number of lines, words and characters.
$ wc test1.txt 5 5 39 test1.txt $ wc test2.txt 5 15 72 test2.txt
2. wc command allow us to pass more than one file name in the argument.
$ wc test1.txt test2.txt 5 5 39 test1.txt 5 15 72 test2.txt 10 20 111 total $wc Bikaner_* 229 2513 45154 Bikaner_eng2ban_gmt.txt 229 2756 46626 Bikaner_hin2ban_bmt.txt 229 2802 48698 Bikaner_hin2ban_gmt.txt 687 8071 140478 total
3. wc command allow us to count lines, words and characters in utf-8 encoded files as well.pass more than one file name in the argument.
$ wc test1.txt test2.txt 5 5 39 test1.txt 5 15 72 test2.txt 10 20 111 total $wc Bikaner_* 229 2513 45154 Bikaner_eng2ban_gmt.txt 229 2756 46626 Bikaner_hin2ban_bmt.txt 229 2802 48698 Bikaner_hin2ban_gmt.txt 687 8071 140478 total
4. To print number of lines present in a file use -l or --lines option.
$ wc -l test2.txt 5 test2.txt $ wc --lines test2.txt 5 test2.txt
5. To print the numbers of bytes in a file use -c or --bytes option.
$ wc -c test1.txt 39 test1.txt $ wc --bytes test1.txt 39 test1.txt
6. To print the number of characters in a file use -m or --chars option.
$ wc -m test2.txt 72 test2.txt $ wc --chars test2.txt 72 test2.txt
7. To print the number of words present in a file use -w or --words option.
$ wc -w test1.txt 5 test1.txt $ wc --words test1.txt 5 test1.txt
8. In case of files that contain characters that have multiple bytes (UTF-8), the number of bytes reported is different than the number of characters. These files that are listed below contain Hindi and Bangla Unicode characters with UTF-8 encodings. So we can see that byte count reported by '-b' option is different than characters count reported by '-m' option.
$ wc -c Bikaner_* 45154 Bikaner_eng2ban_gmt.txt 46626 Bikaner_hin2ban_bmt.txt 48698 Bikaner_hin2ban_gmt.txt 140478 total $ wc -m Bikaner_* 17394 Bikaner_eng2ban_gmt.txt 17952 Bikaner_hin2ban_bmt.txt 18702 Bikaner_hin2ban_gmt.txt 54048 total
9. The wc command can be used in combination with other commands through piping.
We can Count the number of files in the Current Directory by the help of wc command. The find command passes a list of all files in the current directory with each file name on a single line to the wc command, which counts the number of lines.
$ find . -type f | wc -l 64425
10. To count the number of records (or rows) in several CSV files the wc can used in conjunction with pipes.
$ cat *.csv | wc -l 4301