NAME
wc —
word, line, character, and byte
count
SYNOPSIS
wc |
[-clmw] [file ...] |
DESCRIPTION
The wc utility displays the number of
lines, words, and bytes contained in each input file,
or standard input (if no file is specified) to the standard output. A line
is defined as a string of characters delimited by a ⟨newline⟩
character. Characters beyond the final ⟨newline⟩ character
will not be included in the line count.
A word is defined as a string of characters delimited by white space characters. White space characters are the set of characters for which the iswspace(3) function returns true. If more than one input file is specified, a line of cumulative counts for all the files is displayed on a separate line after the output for the last file.
The following options are available:
-c- The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard output.
This will cancel out any prior usage of the
-moption. -l- The number of lines in each input file is written to the standard output.
-m- The number of characters in each input file is written to the standard
output. If the current locale does not support multibyte characters, this
is equivalent to the
-coption. This will cancel out any prior usage of the-coption. -w- The number of words in each input file is written to the standard output.
When an option is specified, wc only
reports the information requested by that option. The order of output always
takes the form of line, word, byte, and file name. The default action is
equivalent to specifying the -c,
-l and -w options.
If no files are specified, the standard input is used and no file name is displayed. The prompt will accept input until receiving EOF, or [^D] in most environments.
ENVIRONMENT
The LANG, LC_ALL
and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the
execution of wc as described in
environ(7).
EXIT STATUS
The wc utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
Count the number of characters, words and lines in each of the files report1 and report2 as well as the totals for both:
wc -mlw report1 report2COMPATIBILITY
Historically, the wc utility was
documented to define a word as a ``maximal string of characters delimited by
<space>, <tab> or <newline> characters''. The
implementation, however, did not handle non-printing characters correctly so
that “ ^D^E ” counted as 6 spaces,
while “foo^D^Ebar” counted as 8
characters. 4BSD systems after
4.3BSD modified the implementation to be consistent
with the documentation. This implementation defines a ``word'' in terms of
the iswspace(3) function, as required by IEEE Std 1003.2
(“POSIX.2”).
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The wc utility conforms to
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
A wc command appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX.