Linux wc Command

In Linux we use “wc” command count the number of words in a file. The wc command on Linux is short for word count.

The wc command can count the number of lines, words, characters, and bytes from standard input or in a file.

wc Command Syntax

~$  wc OPTION... [FILE]...

Option	Description
-l --lines	Print the number of lines.
-c --bytes	Print the number of bytes.
-L --max-line-length	Print the length of the longest line.
-m --chars	Print the number of characters.
-w --words	Print the number of words.

wc Command Example

~$  wc logfile.txt 
    3 15 66 example.txt

The output explains that the file contains the following.

3 new lines
15 words
66 bytes.

wc Command Multiple File Example

~$  wc file_1.txt file_2.txt
   1   2  13 file_1.txt
   4  29 169 file_2.txt
   5  31 182 total

wc Command Pipe with Other Commands

echo Command with wc Pipe

echo command used to print message or store message to a file using » operator. We can use echo with message and pipe with wc to count the lines, words, and bytes.

~$ echo "How many words are in this sentence?" | wc
      2       15      30

ls Command with wc Pipe

We can use ls -l with wc -l pipe to counts the number of files in a directory.

~$ ls -l  | wc -l
14

wc -l or –lines option

Use the -l or –lines option if you only want to determine the number of lines in a file.

~$  wc -l example.txt 
4 example.txt

wc -w or –words option

wc -w or –words option can be used if you only want to determine the number of words in a file.

~$  wc -w file_1.txt

wc -c or –byte option

Use the -c or –bytes option if you only want to determine the number of bytes in a file.

~$  wc -c file_1.txt

wc -m or –chars option

wc -m or –chars option count the number of characters in a file. It will be the same number as the bytes.

~$  wc -m file_1.txt