`wc` count lines, words and bytes

wc (word count) reports how many lines, words and bytes are in its input. Most of the time you want wc -l, the number of lines.

Availability Preinstalled on macOS, Linux and BSD

Syntax

wc [-l] [-w] [-c] [-m] [file ...]

Option	What it does
`-l`	Count lines
`-w`	Count words
`-c`	Count bytes
`-m`	Count characters (differs from bytes for non-ASCII text)

wc -l users.csv

wc -l *.csv

With -o raw there is no header, so every line is one row.

sqx -f users=users.csv -o raw "SELECT email FROM users WHERE plan = 'pro'" | wc -l

COUNT(*) is exact and ignores the header row, which wc -l would include.

sqx -f users=users.csv "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE plan = 'pro'"

This page covers the essentials. For every option, see the official documentation:

Or read the manual in your terminal: man wc