(short for word count) is a command in

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

, Plan 9, Inferno, and

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s. The program reads either

standard input In computer programming, standard streams are preconnected input and output communication channels between a computer program and its environment when it begins execution. The three input/output (I/O) connections are called standard input (stdin), ...

or a list of

computer file A computer file is a System resource, resource for recording Data (computing), data on a Computer data storage, computer storage device, primarily identified by its filename. Just as words can be written on paper, so too can data be written to a ...

s and generates one or more of the following statistics:

newline A newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or ...

count,

word count The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and ad ...

, and

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

count. If a list of files is provided, both individual file and total statistics follow.

Example

Sample execution of wc: $ wc foo bar 40 149 947 foo 2294 16638 97724 bar 2334 16787 98671 total The first column is the count of newlines, meaning that the text file foo has 40 newlines while bar has 2294 newlines- resulting in a total of 2334 newlines. The second column indicates the number of words in each text file showing that there are 149 words in foo and 16638 words in bar giving a total of 16787 words. The last column indicates the number of characters in each text file, meaning that the file foo has 947 characters while bar has 97724 characters 98671 characters all in all. Newer versions of wc can differentiate between

and character count. This difference arises with

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

which includes multi-byte characters. The desired behaviour is selected with the -c or -m options. Through a

pipeline A pipeline is a system of Pipe (fluid conveyance), pipes for long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas, typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than of pipeline in 120 countries ...

, it can also be used to preview the output size of a command with a potentially large output, without it printing the text into the console: $ grep -r "example" , wc 1071 23337 101349

History

is part of the

X/Open X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of info ...

Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the

Single Unix Specification The Single UNIX Specification (SUS) is a standard for computer operating systems, compliance with which is required to qualify for using the "UNIX" trademark. The standard specifies programming interfaces for the C language, a command-line shell, ...

. It appeared in Version 1 Unix.

GNU GNU ( ) is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popu ...

wc used to be part of the GNU

textutils The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a collection of GNU software that implements many standard, Unix-based shell commands. The utilities generally provide POSIX compliant interface when the environment variable is set, but otherwise offers a ...

package; it is now part of GNU

coreutils The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a collection of GNU software that implements many standard, Unix-based shell commands. The utilities generally provide POSIX compliant interface when the environment variable is set, but otherwise offers ...

. The version of wc bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Paul Rubin and David MacKenzie. A wc command is also part of

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

's ''MSX-DOS2 Tools'' for

MSX-DOS MSX-DOS is a discontinued disk operating system developed by Microsoft's Japan subsidiary for the 8-bit home computer standard MSX, and is a cross between MS-DOS v1.25 and CP/M-80 v2.2. MSX-DOS MSX-DOS and the extended BASIC with 3½-in ...

version 2. The command is available as a separate package for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

as part of the GnuWin32 project and the

UnxUtils UnxUtils is a collection of utility programs that provide popular Unix-based shell commands ported from GNU implementations as native Windows programs that depend only on Win32 and the Microsoft C- runtime ( msvcrt.dll). The collection wa ...

collection of

native Native may refer to: People * '' Jus sanguinis'', nationality by blood * '' Jus soli'', nationality by location of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Nat ...

Win32 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running. Programs can acces ...

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

of common GNU Unix-like utilities. The command has also been ported to the

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in 2 ...

operating system.

Usage

*wc -c prints the byte count *wc -l prints the line count *wc -m prints the character count *wc -w prints the word count *wc -L prints the length of the longest line (GNU extension)

References

External links

wc(1) - Original Unix First Edition manual page for wc
* * *

by The Linux Information Project (LINFO) {{Core Utilities commands Unix text processing utilities Unix SUS2008 utilities Plan 9 commands Inferno (operating system) commands IBM i Qshell commands

Example

History

Usage

See also

References

External links