---
layout: page
author: Alessandro Luini
category-page: advanced
category-title: Advanced commands
tags: word count lines
title: wc
previous-page: pages/cmd/advanced/vi.html
---
The program reads either standard input or a list of files and
generates one or more of the following statistics: newline count,
word count, and byte count. If a list of files is provided, both
individual file and total statistics follow.

<h3>How to use</h3>
Sample execution of wc:

<pre>
wc file1.txt file2.txt
</pre>

will output:

<pre>
      40      149      947     file1.txt
    2294    16638    97724    file2.txt
    2334    16787    98671    total
</pre>

The first column is the count of newlines, meaning that the text file
<code>file1.txt</code> has 40 newlines while bar has 2294 newlines-
resulting in a total of 2334 newlines. The second column indicates the
number of words in each text file showing that there are 149 words in <code>file1.txt</code>
and 16638 words in <code>file2.txt</code> – giving a total of 16787 words.<br>
The last column indicates the number of characters in each text file, meaning that the file
<code>file1.txt</code> has 947 characters while bar has 97724 characters – 98671
characters all in all.<br>

<h3>Flags</h3>

<pre>
wc -l file1.txt
</pre>

Prints the line count (note that if the last line does not have <code>\n</code>,
it will not be counted).

<pre>
wc -c file1.txt
</pre>

Prints the byte count.

<pre>
wc -m file1.txt
</pre>

Prints the character count.

<pre>
wc -L file1.txt
</pre>

Prints the length of longest line (GNU extension)

<pre>
wc -w file1.txt
</pre>

Prints the word count.