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WC(1)			     General Commands Manual			   WC(1)

NAME
     wc -- word, line, character, and byte count

SYNOPSIS
     wc [-Lclmw] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The  wc utility displays the number of lines, words, and bytes contained in
     each input file, or standard input (if no file is specified) to  the  stan-
     dard  output.   A	line is defined as a string of characters delimited by a
     <newline> character.  Characters beyond the final <newline> character  will
     not be included in the line count.

     A	word is defined as a string of characters delimited by white space char-
     acters.  White space characters are the set of  characters  for  which  the
     iswspace(3)  function  returns true.  If more than one input file is speci-
     fied, a line of cumulative counts for all the files is displayed on a sepa-
     rate line after the output for the last file.

     The following options are available:

     -L      The number of characters in the longest input line  is  written  to
	     the  standard  output.   When more then one file argument is speci-
	     fied, the longest input line of all files is reported as the  value
	     of the final "total".

     -c      The  number  of bytes in each input file is written to the standard
	     output.  This will cancel out any prior usage of the -m option.

     -l      The number of lines in each input file is written to  the	standard
	     output.

     -m      The number of characters in each input file is written to the stan-
	     dard  output.   If  the  current  locale does not support multibyte
	     characters, this is equivalent to the -c option.  This will  cancel
	     out any prior usage of the -c option.

     -w      The  number  of words in each input file is written to the standard
	     output.

     When an option is specified, wc only reports the information  requested  by
     that  option.   The  order  of  output always takes the form of line, word,
     byte, and file name.  The default action is equivalent  to  specifying  the
     -c, -l and -w options.

     If  no  files are specified, the standard input is used and no file name is
     displayed.  The prompt will accept input until receiving EOF,  or	[^D]  in
     most environments.

ENVIRONMENT
     The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of
     wc as described in environ(7).

EXIT STATUS
     The wc utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES
     Count  the  number  of  characters,  words  and  lines in each of the files
     report1 and report2 as well as the totals for both:

	   wc -mlw report1 report2

     Find the longest line in a list of files:

	   wc -L file1 file2 file3 | fgrep total

COMPATIBILITY
     Historically, the wc utility was documented to define a word as a	"maximal
     string  of characters delimited by <space>, <tab> or <newline> characters".
     The implementation, however, did not handle  non-printing	characters  cor-
     rectly  so  that "  ^D^E  " counted as 6 spaces, while "foo^D^Ebar" counted
     as 8 characters.  4BSD systems after 4.3BSD modified the implementation  to
     be consistent with the documentation.  This implementation defines a "word"
     in  terms	of  the  iswspace(3)  function,  as  required by IEEE Std 1003.2
     ("POSIX.2").

     The -L option is a non-standard FreeBSD extension, compatible with  the  -L
     option of the GNU wc utility.

SEE ALSO
     iswspace(3)

STANDARDS
     The wc utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1").

HISTORY
     A wc command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

FreeBSD 8.0			December 6, 2008			   WC(1)
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