What Is Wc in Shell

wc. wc stands for Word Count, although it can also count characters and lines. This makes it a flexible tool for counting any kind of items. It is most commonly used to count the number of lines in a file, or (as with most Unix tools) in any other data sent to it, but it can count characters and words, too.

What does wc mean in Shell?

wc (short for word count) is a command in Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems. The program reads either standard input or a list of computer files and generates one or more of the following statistics: newline count, word count, and byte count.

What is wc option?

On Linux and Unix-like operating systems, the wc command allows you to count the number of lines, words, characters, and bytes of each given file or standard input and print the result.

Alexander Ross

Alexander Ross

Gaming, Esports & Interactive Media Writer

Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.

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