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 output.

       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 <newline>s in each input file.

       -m     Write to the standard output the number of characters 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 operands 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 internationalization 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 categories.)

       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
              characters.

       LC_MESSAGES
              Determine  the  locale  that  should  be  used to affect the format and contents of
              diagnostic messages 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 written.

       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
       appropriate. 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 multiple 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 Operating System
       Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003  by
       the  Institute  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.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .