Wc

wc is a little program that counts the number of lines, words, and bytes (characters) of a plain text file.

Contents 1 Examples 2 A single file 3 Multiple files 4 Lines, words, or characters only 4.1 Lines 4.2 Words 4.3 Characters 4.4 Bytes 4.5 Getting a value into a variable = 5 Using standard input 5.1 Using pipes 5.2 Using I/O Redirection 6 Counting the number of sequences in a fasta file

[edit] 1 Examples

[edit] 2 A single file

The order goes lines, words, characters/bytes, filename.

wc textfile
     958    1290   77366 textfile

[edit] 3 Multiple files

wc textfile1 textfile2 
     772    6184   51267 textfile1
    1039   11798   86461 textfile2
    1811   17982  137728 total

[edit] 4 Lines, words, or characters only

[edit] 4.1 Lines

wc -l disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt 
    4731 disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt

[edit] 4.2 Words

wc -w disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt 
    5397 disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt

[edit] 4.3 Characters

Equivalent to -c if the current locale does not support multibyte characters.

wc -m disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt 
   243986 disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt

[edit] 4.4 Bytes

wc -c disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt 
  243986 disprot_fasta_v3.5.txt

[edit] 4.5 Getting a value into a variable =

Since the regular program, use a pipe or I/O redirection as further explained below:

lines=`wc -l < FILENAME`

[edit] 5 Using standard input

[edit] 5.1 Using pipes

cat textfile1 textfile2 | wc
      76      76    1444

[edit] 5.2 Using I/O Redirection

wc < textfile 
      76      76    1444

[edit] 6 Counting the number of sequences in a fasta file

grep ">" FILE | wc -l
grep ">" < INPUT | wc -l

The grep will find all of the name lines by searching for the name lines starting with ">" and the wc will count the lines and print out the number.