Counting characters, words, and lines

The word count wc command is yet another very handy command. It counts the number of lines, words, and characters in a file. For example, to display the number of lines in the file facts.txt, you can use the -l option:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ wc -l facts.txt
12 facts.txt

There are a total of 12 lines in the file facts.txt. To display the number of words, you can use the -w option:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ wc -w facts.txt
37 facts.txt

So there is a total of 37 words in the file facts.txt. To display the number of characters (bytes), you can use the -c option:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ wc -c facts.txt
210 facts.txt

There is a total of 210 characters in the file facts.txt. Without any options, the wc command will display the number of lines, words, and characters side by side:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ wc facts.txt
12 37 210 facts.txt