wc

The UNIX or GNU command wc can do automatic word counts, as can many word processors. Word counting programs give varying results, depending on definition of "word", text segmentation algorithms, and whether words outside the main text such as footnotes or hidden text are counted.

Word count may be needed where an author is required to stay within certain range of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word counts may be used calculating readability, to measure typing and reading speeds (usually in words per minute), or to categorize documents by length.

Options:
* -bytes: Prints the character counts.
* -c: Prints the character counts.
* --chars: Prints the character counts.
* -l Prints the number of lines in the file.
* --lines: Prints the number of lines in the file.
* -w: Prints the number of words in the files.
* --words: Prints the number of words in the files.
Posted on May 31st, 2014

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