WC(1) BSD General Commands Manual WC(1)NAMEwc — word, line, and byte count
SYNOPSISwc [-clw] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The wc utility displays the number of lines, words, and bytes contained
in each input file (or standard input, by default) to the standard out‐
put. A line is defined as a string of characters delimited by a <new‐
line> character, and a word is defined as a string of characters delim‐
ited by white space characters. White space characters are the set of
characters for which the isspace(3) function returns true. If more than
one input file is specified, a line of cumulative counts for all the
files is displayed on a separate line after the output for the last file.
The following options are available:
-c The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard
output.
-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.
When an option is specified, wc only reports the information requested by
that option. The default action is equivalent to specifying all of the
flags.
If no files are specified, the standard input is used and no file name is
displayed.
The wc utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSOisspace(3)COMPATIBILITY
Historically, the wc utility was documented to define a word as a ``maxi‐
mal string of characters delimited by <space>, <tab> or <newline> charac‐
ters''. The implementation, however, didn't handle non-printing charac‐
ters correctly so that `` ^D^E '' counted as 6 spaces, while
``foo^D^Ebar'' counted as 8 characters. 4BSD systems after 4.3BSD modi‐
fied the implementation to be consistent with the documentation. This
implementation defines a ``word'' in terms of the isspace(3) function, as
required by IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”).
STANDARDS
The wc function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”).
BSD April 19, 1994 BSD
