wc

🔢 wc Command in Linux

The wc (word count) command is used to count lines, words, characters, bytes, and maximum line lengths in text files or input streams.

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📋 Common Options

Option	Description
-l	Count lines
-w	Count words
-c	Count bytes
-m	Count characters (useful for multibyte text)
-L	Print length of longest line

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🧪 Examples

Count Lines, Words, and Bytes in a File

wc file.txt

Output format: <lines> <words> <bytes> file.txt

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🛠 Use Cases

• Check file size quickly by byte count: wc -c filename

• Count lines of code: find . -name "*.py" | xargs wc -l

• Measure log file growth: wc -l logfile.log

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🔗 More Pipe Examples

Practical combinations of wc with other Linux commands using pipes:

Count files in a directory

ls | wc -l

Count non-empty lines in a file

grep -v '^$' file.txt | wc -l

Count how many .txt files contain the word "error"

grep -il "error" *.txt | wc -l

Count total words across multiple .md files

cat *.md | wc -w

Count active processes

ps aux | wc -l

Count users currently logged in

who | wc -l

Count open network connections

netstat -tun | tail -n +3 | wc -l

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