NAME
wc —
word, line, and byte count
SYNOPSIS
wc |
[-c | -m]
[-Llw] [file ...] |
DESCRIPTION
The wc utility displays the number of
lines, words, bytes and characters contained in each input
file (or standard input, by default) to the standard
output. A line is defined as a string of characters delimited by a
<newline> character, and a word is defined as a string of characters
delimited by white space characters. White space characters are the set of
characters for which the
iswspace(3) function returns true. If more than one input
file is specified, a line of cumulative counts for all the files is
displayed on a separate line after the output for the last file.
The following options are available:
-c- The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard output.
-L- The number of characters in the longest line of each input file is written to the standard output.
-l- The number of lines in each input file is written to the standard output.
-m- The number of characters in each input file is written to the standard output.
-w- The number of words in each input file is written to the standard output.
When an option is specified, wc only
reports the information requested by that option. The default action is
equivalent to all the flags -clw having been
specified.
The following operands are available:
- file
- A pathname of an input file.
If no file names are specified, the standard input is used and no file name is displayed.
By default, the standard output contains a line for each input file of the form:
lines words bytes file_name
EXIT STATUS
The wc utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
COMPATIBILITY
Historically, the wc utility was
documented to define a word as a ``maximal string of characters delimited by
⟨space⟩, ⟨tab⟩ or ⟨newline⟩
characters''. The implementation, however, didn't handle non-printing
characters correctly so that `` ^D^E '' counted as 6 spaces, while
``foo^D^Ebar'' counted as 8 characters. 4BSD systems
after 4.3BSD modified the implementation to be
consistent with the documentation. This implementation defines a ``word'' in
terms of the
iswspace(3) function, as required by IEEE
Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”).
The -L option is a non-standard extension,
compatible with the -L option of the GNU and
FreeBSD wc utilities.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The wc utility conforms to
IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 (“POSIX.2”).
HISTORY
A wc utility appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX.