6.1 Directory and File Management Using the Command Line
6.1.5 The wc command
The wc Command
The
wc (word count) command can be used to display line, word, byte or character counts for a text file. This command is useful when trying to determine characteristics of a file or when comparing two files. Using wc  without options will give a line, word, and byte count of the contents of the file. Using it with individual options allows you to determine which of these you would like to see. Figure lists the options that are available with the wc command.

Like the head and tail commands, wc can be used by itself but is typically used in a command line containing several commands in a pipeline when you want to count the output. This will be covered later in the course.

Command Format:
wc [options] filename(s)

Figure shows examples of its use. In the first example, the wc command by itself indicates that the file dante contains 33 lines, 223 words and 1320 bytes. The second example shows the line count.