19.Word_Count_Command.md

Word Count

Command (wc Command)

The wc command is used to count the number of lines, words, and characters in a given file.

wc filename

This will output:

no_of_lines no_of_words no_of_characters filename

Example:

# Create the file a.txt with the following content

#Mango is very Sweet
#Linux is very easy language to learn
#Java is just like ocean
#Python is next level very useful programming language

akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ gedit a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc a.txt
  4  24 135 a.txt

• 4 → Number of lines
• 24 → Number of words
• 135 → Number of characters (file size in bytes)

Options with wc Command:

• -l → To print only the number of lines
• -w → To print only the number of words
• -c → To print only the number of characters
• -lw → To print only the number of lines and words
• -lc → To print only the number of lines and characters
• -wc → To print only the number of words and characters
• -L → To print the number of characters present in the longest line

Examples with Options:

akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc a.txt
  4  24 135 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc -l a.txt 
4 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc -w a.txt 
24 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc -c a.txt 
135 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc -lw a.txt 
  4  24 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc -lc a.txt 
  4 135 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc -wc a.txt 
 24 135 a.txt
akshay@Ubuntu:~/Desktop$ wc L a.txt 
wc: L: No such file or directory
  4  24 135 a.txt
  4  24 135 total

Using wc for Multiple Files:

$ wc a.txt b.txt c.txt
 4 26 166 a.txt
 3  4  27 b.txt
 4  4 112 c.txt
11 34 305 total