Linux and Unix Shell Programming

wc

Format:

wc options files 

Options:

-c	Print character count
-l	Print line count
-w	Print word count

This counts the number of characters or words.

					$ who|wc 
      1    6    46 
$ who|wc -l 
      1
				

In the first example output the who command is piped through to wc, and the following columns are displayed:

number of lines, number of words, number of characters 

In the second example, wc just prints the number of lines.

					$ VAR="tapedrive" 
echo $VAR | wc -c
10
				

The number of characters in the string VAR is output.