UNIX Shells by Example (4th Edition)

wc ”counts lines, words, and characters

wc [ lwc ] [ filename ... ]

wc counts lines, words, and characters in a file or in the standard input if no filename is given. A word is a string of characters delimited by a space, tab, or newline.

Example A.69.

1 wc filex 2 who wc -l 3 wc -l filex

EXPLANATION

1. Prints the number of lines, words, and characters in filex .

2. The output of the who command is piped to wc , displaying the number of lines counted.

3. Prints the number of lines in filex .