Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Man page of WC

WC

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: June 2025
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NAME

wc - print newline, word, and byte counts for each file  

SYNOPSIS

wc [,OPTION/]... [,FILE/]...
wc [,OPTION/]... ,--files0-from=F/  

DESCRIPTION

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line if more than one FILE is specified. A word is a nonempty sequence of non white space delimited by white space characters or by start or end of input.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

The options below may be used to select which counts are printed, always in the following order: newline, word, character, byte, maximum line length.

-c, --bytes
print the byte counts
-m, --chars
print the character counts
-l, --lines
print the newline counts
--files0-from=,F/
read input from the files specified by NUL-terminated names in file F; If F is - then read names from standard input
-L, --max-line-length
print the maximum display width
-w, --words
print the word counts
--total=,WHEN/
when to print a line with total counts; WHEN can be: auto, always, only, never
--help
display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit
 

AUTHOR

Written by Paul Rubin and David MacKenzie.  

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>  

SEE ALSO

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/wc>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) wc invocation'


Packaged by Debian (9.7-3)
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR
REPORTING BUGS
SEE ALSO
This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 11:48:42 GMT, September 14, 2026