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wc(P) wc(P)
NAME
wc - word, line, and byte or character count
SYNOPSIS
wc [-c|-m][-lw][file...]
DESCRIPTION
The wc utility shall read one or more input files and,
by default, write the number of <newline>s, words, and
bytes contained in each input file to the standard out-
put.
The utility also shall write a total count for all named
files, if more than one input file is specified.
The wc utility shall consider a word to be a non-zero-
length string of characters delimited by white space.
OPTIONS
The wc utility shall conform to the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility
Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-c Write to the standard output the number of bytes
in each input file.
-l Write to the standard output the number of <new-
line>s in each input file.
-m Write to the standard output the number of char-
acters in each input file.
-w Write to the standard output the number of words
in each input file.
When any option is specified, wc shall report only the
information requested by the specified options.
OPERANDS
The following operand shall be supported:
file A pathname of an input file. If no file operands
are specified, the standard input shall be used.
STDIN
The standard input shall be used only if no file oper-
ands are specified. See the INPUT FILES section.
INPUT FILES
The input files may be of any type.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the
execution of wc:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationaliza-
tion variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001,
Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for
the precedence of internationalization variables
used to determine the values of locale cate-
gories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the
values of all the other internationalization
variables.
LC_CTYPE
Determine the locale for the interpretation of
sequences of bytes of text data as characters
(for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-
byte characters in arguments and input files) and
which characters are defined as white space char-
acters.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to
affect the format and contents of diagnostic mes-
sages written to standard error and informative
messages written to standard output.
NLSPATH
Determine the location of message catalogs for
the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
By default, the standard output shall contain an entry
for each input file of the form:
"%d %d %d %s\n", <newlines>, <words>, <bytes>, <file>
If the -m option is specified, the number of characters
shall replace the <bytes> field in this format.
If any options are specified and the -l option is not
specified, the number of <newline>s shall not be writ-
ten.
If any options are specified and the -w option is not
specified, the number of words shall not be written.
If any options are specified and neither -c nor -m is
specified, the number of bytes or characters shall not
be written.
If no input file operands are specified, no name shall
be written and no <blank>s preceding the pathname shall
be written.
If more than one input file operand is specified, an
additional line shall be written, of the same format as
the other lines, except that the word total (in the
POSIX locale) shall be written instead of a pathname and
the total of each column shall be written as appropri-
ate. Such an additional line, if any, is written at the
end of the output.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic
messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
The -m option is not a switch, but an option at the same
level as -c. Thus, to produce the full default output
with character counts instead of bytes, the command
required is:
wc -mlw
EXAMPLES
None.
RATIONALE
The output file format pseudo- printf() string differs
from the System V version of wc:
"%7d%7d%7d %s\n"
which produces possibly ambiguous and unparsable results
for very large files, as it assumes no number shall
exceed six digits.
Some historical implementations use only <space>, <tab>,
and <newline> as word separators. The equivalent of the
ISO C standard isspace() function is more appropriate.
The -c option stands for "character" count, even though
it counts bytes. This stems from the sometimes erroneous
historical view that bytes and characters are the same
size. Due to international requirements, the -m option
(reminiscent of "multi-byte") was added to obtain actual
character counts.
Early proposals only specified the results when input
files were text files. The current specification more
closely matches historical practice. (Bytes, words, and
<newline>s are counted separately and the results are
written when an end-of-file is detected.)
Historical implementations of the wc utility only
accepted one argument to specify the options -c, -l, and
-w. Some of them also had multiple occurrences of an
option cause the corresponding count to be written mul-
tiple times and had the order of specification of the
options affect the order of the fields on output, but
did not document either of these. Because common usage
either specifies no options or only one option, and
because none of this was documented, the changes
required by this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 should
not break many historical applications (and do not break
any historical conforming applications).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
cksum
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in
electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operat-
ing System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Speci-
fications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Insti-
tute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and
The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
is the referee document. The original Standard can be
obtained online at http://www.open-
group.org/unix/online.html .
POSIX 2003 wc(P)
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