
What does WC mean in Linux?
Definition of Linux WC. The Command WC (word count) in Linux OS allows to find out the word count, newline count, and the count of bytes or characters in a file that is mentioned by the file arguments. The output that is returned from word count command will give you the count of lines in a file or the number of words or character in a file.
What are the applications of wc command?
Applications of wc Command 1. To count all files and folders present in directory: As we all know ls command in unix is used to display all the files and folders present in the directory, when it is piped with wc command with -l option it display count of all files and folders present in current directory.
What does wc-l do in Linux?
wc -l : Prints the number of lines in a file. wc -w : prints the number of words in a file. wc -c : Displays the count of bytes in a file. wc -m : prints the count of characters from a file. wc -L : prints only the length of the longest line in a file.
How many columns does the wc command print?
In it’s simplest form when used without any options, the wc command will print four columns, the number of lines, words, byte counts and the name of the file for each file passed as an argument. When using the standard input the fourth column (filename) is not displayed.

What does wc mean in Shell?
word countwc (short for word count) is a command in Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems. The program reads either standard input or a list of computer files and generates one or more of the following statistics: newline count, word count, and byte count.
What is the wc command in bash?
The “wc” or the word count command in Bash is considered extremely useful as it helps in finding out various statistics of a file. This command can be used in multiple different variations.
What does the wc command give us?
The wc command stands for “word count” and has a quite simple syntax. It allows you to count the number of lines, words, bytes, and characters in one or multiple text files.
What does LS wc do?
The wc command tells you how big a text document is. tells you the number of lines, words, and bytes in each file. This pipes the output of ls through wc.
What does wc mean in Linux?
word countThe wc (word count) command in Unix/Linux operating systems is used to find out number of newline count, word count, byte and characters count in a files specified by the file arguments.
How does wc work?
The Command WC (word count) in Linux OS allows to find out the word count, newline count, and the count of bytes or characters in a file that is mentioned by the file arguments. The output that is returned from word count command will give you the count of lines in a file or the number of words or character in a file.
Who wc in Unix?
The wc command in UNIX is a command line utility for printing newline, word and byte counts for files. It can return the number of lines in a file, the number of characters in a file and the number of words in a file. It can also be combine with pipes for general counting operations.
What is a wc file?
wc stands for word count. As the name implies, it is mainly used for counting purpose. It is used to find out number of lines, word count, byte and characters count in the files specified in the file arguments.
How do you use grep and wc?
Using grep -c alone will count the number of lines that contain the matching word instead of the number of total matches. The -o option is what tells grep to output each match in a unique line and then wc -l tells wc to count the number of lines. This is how the total number of matching words is deduced.
Who wc output is?
The wc utility displays the number of lines, words, and bytes contained in each input file (or standard input, by default) to standard output. A line is defined as a string of characters delimited by a newline character. A word is defined as a string of characters delimited by white space characters.
What is the output of ls wc?
Normally the output of wc -l command gives the number of lines in a file. But, when we pipe the output of ls command to it, it seems to show the number of files and directories and links in the current working directory correctly.
What is the output of wc?
The wc utility displays the number of lines, words, and bytes contained in each input file (or standard input, by default) to standard output. A line is defined as a string of characters delimited by a newline character. A word is defined as a string of characters delimited by white space characters.
Who wc in Unix?
The wc command in UNIX is a command line utility for printing newline, word and byte counts for files. It can return the number of lines in a file, the number of characters in a file and the number of words in a file. It can also be combine with pipes for general counting operations.
How do you use grep and wc?
Using grep -c alone will count the number of lines that contain the matching word instead of the number of total matches. The -o option is what tells grep to output each match in a unique line and then wc -l tells wc to count the number of lines. This is how the total number of matching words is deduced.
What are bash commands?
When you issue a command to Bash, it searches specific directories on your system to see whether such a command exists. If the command does exist, then Bash executes it. Bash is also a command, and it's usually the default command executed when you open a terminal window or log into a text console.
find
Is a very powerful command with many options, but essentially finds filenames for files matching the predicates and options specified.
Zsh, Antigen & Oh-My-Zsh
Unix is a lot easier with a good shell, and helpful tools. I recommend you use Zsh, the easy way to get this setup is to use Antigen and Oh-my-zsh (Antigen will help install Oh-My-Zsh and a bunch of other tools, so follow it's instructions.)
How to learn cool combinations of commands?
Well, to get started, always remember you have basic looping and conditions available on the unix shell.
Hidden gold
There are two commands sed and awk which are almost languages in their own right. It is not necessary to know them inside out, and many things they do can be replicated by simpler commands, such as tr and cut. However, understanding how they basically work is a very handy thing to know.
How does WC Command Work in Linux?
We can use –help command in Linux to find out the ways how WC Command works in Linux.
Examples of WC Command in Linux
Below are the examples of options that can be used in WC command with their syntax and examples for better understanding.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Linux WC. Here we also discuss the definition and how does wc command work in linux? along with different examples and its code implementation. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
1. A Basic Example of WC Command
The ‘ wc ‘ command without passing any parameter will display a basic result of ” tecmint.txt ‘ file. The three numbers shown below are 12 ( number of lines ), 16 ( number of words) and 112 ( number of bytes) of the file.
2. Count Number of Lines
To count number of newlines in a file use the option ‘ -l ‘, which prints the number of lines from a given file. Say, the following command will display the count of newlines in a file. In the output the first filed assigned as count and second field is the name of file.
3. Display Number of Words
Using ‘ -w ‘ argument with ‘ wc ‘ command prints the number of words in a file. Type the following command to count the words in a file.
4. Count Number of Bytes and Characters
When using options ‘ -c ‘ and ‘ -m ‘ with ‘ wc ‘ command will print the total number of bytes and characters respectively in a file.
5. Display Length of Longest Line
The ‘ wc ‘ command allow an argument ‘ -L ‘, it can be used to print out the length of longest ( number of characters) line in a file. So, we have the longest character line (‘ Scientific Linux ‘) in a file.
6. Check More WC Options
For more information and help on the wc command, simple run the ‘ wc –help ‘ or ‘ man wc ‘ from the command line.
