wc - Man Page

print newline, word, and byte counts for each file

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...
wc [OPTION]... --files0-from=F

Description

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line if more than one FILE is specified.  A word is a nonempty sequence of non white space delimited by white space characters or by start or end of input.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

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

--total=WHEN

when to print a line with total counts; WHEN can be: auto, always, only, never

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Author

Written by Paul Rubin and David MacKenzie.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

See Also

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/wc>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) wc invocation'

Referenced By

bridge(8), flowdumper(1), gc(1), ip(8), nop(1), rc(1), rs(1), tc(8).

November 2024 GNU coreutils 9.5