wc (word count)

You can use the command wc to count how many words or lines are in a file and here are some examples:

To count words using wc:

wc -w filename

At the shell prompt, type wc -w (for words) and the name of the file in which you want to count the words.

To count lines with wc:

wc -l filename

Use wc -l followed by the filename to count the lines. This is useful for things like lists.

To count files in a directory

ls | wc -l

Use ls with wc to count the regular files and directories or use ls -A | wc -l to count all files and directories (except for the . and .. directories)

To count bytes of a specific file

wc -c filename

This shows how many bytes a specific file takes up. You could use wc with no flags at all to get the lines, words and bytes of a file.