118-the-wc-command.md

The wc command

the wc command stands for word count. It's used to count the number of lines, words, and bytes (characters) in a file or standard input then prints the result to the standard output.

Examples:

1. To count the number of lines, words and characters in a file in order:

wc file.txt

2. To count the number of directories in a directory:

ls -F | grep / | wc -l

Syntax:

wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Additional Flags and their Functionalities:

Short Flag	Long Flag	Description
-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

Additional Notes:

• Passing more than one file to wc command prints the counts for each file and the total conuts of them.
• you can combine more whan one flag to print the result as you want.