WC(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 28 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 WC(1) — word, line, and byte or character count 💖

okay bestie so this is wc, from the User Commands girlies of the manual. it counts stuff for you. it's giving ✨effortless✨. let's get into it 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...
wc [OPTION]... --files0-from=F

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So what it does is: it prints newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and it also gives you a total line if you handed it more than one FILE. cute, right?

And a word?? Bestie. A word is a nonempty sequence of non white space — delimited by white space characters, or by the start or end of the input. that's it. that's the whole definition. periodt 💅

If you give it no FILE, or if FILE is -, it reads standard input. classic. it's flexible like that 🙈

The options down below let you pick which counts get printed, and they always come out in this exact order, no negotiation, no cap:

  1. newline
  2. word
  3. character
  4. byte
  5. maximum line length

like that's just the order. the order is the order. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -c, --bytes — print the byte counts. bytes, bestie. 🍓
  • -m, --chars — print the character counts. chars >>> bytes, they're not the same thing and I need you to know that 🌈
  • -l, --lines — print the newline counts. counting them newlines fr fr 😭
  • --debug — tells you what line count acceleration is being used. yes it's spilling the tea on its own internals 💀
  • --files0-from=F — reads input from the files named by NUL-terminated names inside file F; and if F is -, it takes those names from standard input. NUL-terminated. not newline-terminated. do not come for me 🎀
  • -L, --max-line-length — prints the maximum display width ✨
  • -w, --words — prints the word counts 🦋
  • --total=WHEN — controls when to print that line with the total counts. WHEN can be: auto, always, only, never — those four, exactly those four, pick one 🫶
  • --help — display this help and exit. the classic escape hatch 💖
  • --version — output version information and exit. so you can see who you're dealing with 👑

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Paul Rubin and David MacKenzie. legends, honestly. we stan. 💜

😭 REPORTING BUGS 😭

Found a bug? Do NOT suffer in silence, bestie, tell the people:

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. like, zero. none. don't come crying to us. 😭

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, and it lives in section WC(1) of the manual. go count some words. slay. 💖✨🎀🫶

📦 where this page comes from