• Introduction
• Basic Usage of wc
• Common Use Cases
• Advanced wc Techniques
• Conclusion

Introduction

The wc (word count) command is a simple yet powerful tool in Linux for counting the number of lines, words, and characters in a file or text input.

Basic Usage of wc

Syntax

The basic syntax of wc is:

wc [options] [file...]

Example

To count the lines, words, and characters in a file:

wc file.txt

Common Use Cases

• Counting Lines: Use the -l option to only display the line count.

  wc -l file.txt
  

• Counting Words: Use the -w option to only display the word count.

  wc -w file.txt
  

Advanced wc Techniques

Counting Characters

Use the -m option to display the character count.

wc -m file.txt

Conclusion

The wc command is a versatile tool for quickly obtaining basic statistics about text files and input in a Linux environment.