Word Count Command in Unix
wc, head, and tail Commands used with Special File Types
The wc
command gives you a line, word, or character count of a file. You can use the –l
option for a line count, the –c
option for a character count, and the –w
option for a word count. For example:
wc –l file1
wc wc [options] [files]
Word count. Print a character, word, and line count for files. If multiple files, print totals as well. If no files are given, read standard
input.
Common Options
- -c, --bytes: Print byte count only.
- -l, --lines: Print line count only.
- -m, --chars: Print character count only. This will be different than -c in a multibyte character environment.
- -w, --words: Print word count only.
Solaris Option
-C Same as -m.
GNU/Linux Option
-L, --max-line-length
Print length of longest line.
Examples
1. Count the number of users logged in:
who | wc -l
2.Count the words in three essay files:
wc -w essay.[123]
3. Count lines in file named by $file (do not display filename):
wc -l < $file
Unix System Administration
would output the number of lines in the file named file1.
The head
and tail
commands allow you to display the first (head
) or last (tail
) part of a specified file. The default amount to be displayed is 10 lines. These commands read from standard input if no files are given or when a filename of -
is encountered.
For example:
head –15 file1
would display the first 15 lines of the file named file1 and
tail file2
would display the last 10 lines of the file named file2.