wc(1) - man - phpman

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⚡ TLDR: wc (tldr-pages)

Count lines, words, and bytes.

Count all lines in a file
wc {{-l|--lines}} {{path/to/file}}
Count all words in a file
wc {{-w|--words}} {{path/to/file}}
Count all bytes in a file
wc {{-c|--bytes}} {{path/to/file}}
Count all characters in a file (taking multi-byte characters into account)
wc {{-m|--chars}} {{path/to/file}}
Count all lines, words, and bytes from `stdin`
{{find .}} | wc
Count the length of the longest line in number of characters
wc {{-L|--max-line-length}} {{path/to/file}}

WC(1) User Commands WC(1)

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 non-zero-length sequence of characters delimited by white space.

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 or‐
der: 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

--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/>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2020 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.

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

GNU coreutils 8.32 January 2026 WC(1)