wc -- word, line, character, and byte count

wc [-clmw] [file ...]

Outputs the number of lines, words, and bytes contained in each input file, or standard input (if no file is specified) to the standard output.
A line is defined as a string of characters delimited by a NL .
Characters beyond the final NL will not be included in the line count. A word is defined as a string of characters delimited by white space characters, the set of characters for which the iswspace(3) function returns true.
If more than one input file is specified, a line of TOTAL counts for all the files is

-c The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard output. This will cancel out any prior usage of the -m option.
-l The number of lines 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.
-L Length of longest line
-m The number of characters in each input file is written to the standard output. If the current locale does not support multibyte characters, this is equivalent to the -c option. This will cancel out any prior usage of the -c option.
When an option is specified, wc only reports the information requested by that option.
The order of output always takes the form of line, word, byte, and file name.
Default -clw. If no files are specified, the standard input is used and no file name is displayed.
The prompt will accept input until receiving EOF [^D]

ENVIRONMENT

The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of wc as described in environ(environ utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

Count the number of characters, words and lines in each of the files report1 and report2 as well as the totals for both: wc -mlw report1 report2

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, did not 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 documenta- tion. This implementation defines a ``word'' in terms of the iswspace(3) function, as required by IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'').

SEE ALSO iswspace