Intro To 'wc' Command In Linux

2023-05-07 - By Robert Elder

     I use the 'wc' command to count the number of words or lines in a file:

wc -w file.txt  # Word count
wc -l file.txt  # Line count
wc -c file.txt  # Byte count

     Here, I have some text in the file 'story.txt':

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been really great
for the human race, because now we have indoor plumbing and candy corn.

Count Words In File With 'wc' Command

     I can count the number of words in the file using this command:

wc -w story.txt

     and the result shows that there are 23 words in the file 'story.txt':

23 story.txt

Count Lines In File With 'wc' Command

     I can also use the '-l' flag to count the number of lines in the file:

wc -l story.txt

     and the result shows that there are 2 lines in the file 'story.txt':

2 story.txt

Count Bytes In File With 'wc' Command

     If I use the '-c' flag, I'll see a count that shows the number of bytes in the file:

wc -c story.txt

     and the result shows that there are 142 bytes in the file 'story.txt':

142 story.txt

Using 'wc' With Multiple Files

     Let's add one more file called 'main.c' that contains the following text:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(){
	return 0;
}

     You can run the 'wc' command on multiple files at once to see individual and aggregate counts:

wc -l story.txt main.c

     and the output is as follows:

  2 story.txt
  5 main.c
  7 total

Default Usage of 'wc' Command

     If you don't use any flags with the 'wc' command you'll see all three counts together:

wc story.txt

     The first number is newline count, followed by the word count, and finally the byte count:

  2  23 142 story.txt

     And that's why the 'wc' command is my favourite Linux command.

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