The wc utility reads one or more input files and, by default, writes the number of newline characters, words and bytes contained in each input file to the standard output.

The utility also writes a total count for all named files, if more than one input file is specified.

wc considers a word to be a non-zero-length string of characters delimited by white space (for example, SPACE, TAB ). See iswspace(3C) or isspace(3C).

The following options are supported:

-c

Count bytes.

-m

Count characters.

-C

Same as -m.

-l

Count lines.

-w

Count words delimited by white space characters or new line characters. Delimiting characters are Extended Unix Code (EUC) characters from any code set defined by iswspace().

If no option is specified the default is -lwc (count lines, words, and bytes.)

The following operand is supported:

file

A path name of an input file. If no file operands are specified, the standard input will be used.

See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of wc when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2³¹ bytes).

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of wc: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

The following exit values are returned:

0

Successful completion.

>0

An error occurred.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

cksum(1), isspace(3C), iswalpha(3C), iswspace(3C), setlocale(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5)