WC(1)                      Commands and Applications                     WC(1)

NAME

       wc - word, line, and byte count

SYNOPSIS

       wc [-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 stan‐
              dard output.

       -l     The number of lines in each input file is written to  the  stan‐
              dard output.

       -w     The  number  of words in each input file is written to the stan‐
              dard 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.

VERSION

       This manual page documents wc version 2.0.

ATTRIBUTIONS

       This  command was ported from FreeBSD source code for distribution with
       GNO/ME 2.0.6.

SEE ALSO

       isspace(3)

COMPATIBILITY

       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, didn't 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 mod‐
       ified the implementation to be consistent with the documentation.  This
       implementation defines a ``word'' in terms of the isspace(3)  function,
       as required by POSIX.2.

STANDARDS

       The wc function conforms to POSIX.2.



GNO                               August 1997                            WC(1)