Info Catalog coreutils: Summarizing files coreutils: sum invocation

coreutils: wc invocation

 
 6.1 ‘wc’: Print newline, word, and byte counts
 ==============================================
 
 ‘wc’ counts the number of bytes, characters, whitespace-separated words,
 and newlines in each given FILE, or standard input if none are given or
 for a FILE of ‘-’.  Synopsis:
 
      wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...
 
    ‘wc’ prints one line of counts for each file, and if the file was
 given as an argument, it prints the file name following the counts.  If
 more than one FILE is given, ‘wc’ prints a final line containing the
 cumulative counts, with the file name ‘total’.  The counts are printed
 in this order: newlines, words, characters, bytes, maximum line length.
 Each count is printed right-justified in a field with at least one space
 between fields so that the numbers and file names normally line up
 nicely in columns.  The width of the count fields varies depending on
 the inputs, so you should not depend on a particular field width.
 However, as a GNU extension, if only one count is printed, it is
 guaranteed to be printed without leading spaces.
 
    By default, ‘wc’ prints three counts: the newline, words, and byte
 counts.  Options can specify that only certain counts be printed.
 Options do not undo others previously given, so
 
      wc --bytes --words
 
 prints both the byte counts and the word counts.
 
    With the ‘--max-line-length’ option, ‘wc’ prints the length of the
 longest line per file, and if there is more than one file it prints the
 maximum (not the sum) of those lengths.  The line lengths here are
 measured in screen columns, according to the current locale and assuming
 tab positions in every 8th column.
 
    The program accepts the following options.  Also see ⇒Common
 options.
 
 ‘-c’
 ‘--bytes’
      Print only the byte counts.
 
 ‘-m’
 ‘--chars’
      Print only the character counts.
 
 ‘-w’
 ‘--words’
      Print only the word counts.
 
 ‘-l’
 ‘--lines’
      Print only the newline counts.
 
 ‘-L’
 ‘--max-line-length’
      Print only the maximum display widths.  Tabs are set at every 8th
      column.  Display widths of wide characters are considered.
      Non-printable characters are given 0 width.
 
 ‘--files0-from=FILE’
      Disallow processing files named on the command line, and instead
      process those named in file FILE; each name being terminated by a
      zero byte (ASCII NUL). This is useful when the list of file names
      is so long that it may exceed a command line length limitation.  In
      such cases, running ‘wc’ via ‘xargs’ is undesirable because it
      splits the list into pieces and makes ‘wc’ print a total for each
      sublist rather than for the entire list.  One way to produce a list
      of ASCII NUL terminated file names is with GNU ‘find’, using its
      ‘-print0’ predicate.  If FILE is ‘-’ then the ASCII NUL terminated
      file names are read from standard input.
 
      For example, to find the length of the longest line in any ‘.c’ or
      ‘.h’ file in the current hierarchy, do this:
 
           find . -name '*.[ch]' -print0 |
             wc -L --files0-from=- | tail -n1
 
    An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
 indicates failure.
 

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