wc

line, word, character/byte count and max line length

wc [-l [c|m] wL] [file … ]

Outputs the number of lines, words, and characters in each input file, or standard input (if no file is specified) to the standard output.
When multiple files are listed total(s) are shown.
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.

`-l`	lines
`-w`	words
`-c`	Characters (bytes) cancels out any prior `-m`
`-m`	If the current locale does not support multibyte characters, equivalent to `-`c option. cancels prior `-c option`.
`-L`	Length of longest line

The order of output always takes the form of lines, words, character, and file name.
Default -lwc.

>hexdump -C dafile
00000000 31 2c 32 20 33 09 34 0a 0a 0a |1,2 3.4...|
0000000a
> wc dafile
3 3 10 dafile
> wc -L dafile
9 dafile

If no files are specified, the standard input is used accepting input until receiving EOF Usually [^D] ^† and no file name is displayed.

Environment

$LANG, $LC_ALL and $LC_CTYPE affect as described in environ

Exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Errors

`wc: inputFilename:489: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character`

EXAMPLES

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

wc -mlw report1 report2