Bash Shell Tips - wc
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The bash wc command
Use the wc command to count things.
This all revolves around piping something (the content of a file, the results of another command, etc.) into the unix/linux wc command.
You can use wc to count words (wc -w), lines (wc -l), or characters (wc -c).
Count the number of files in a folder and subfolders
$ find . -type f | wc -l
Count the number of words in a text file
$ cat filename.txt | wc -w
Count the number of lines in a text file
$ cat filename.txt | wc -l
Count the number of times the word "todo" appears in a file
$ grep -i "todo" filename.ext | wc -l
Count the number of files containing the word "todo" in this folder, or subfolders
$ grep -lir "todo" | wc -l
Count how many unique email addresses have committed to a git repo
(Assumes you're in a folder with a git repo.)
$ git log --format="%ae" | sort | uniq | wc -l
Learn how to use wc
Remember, most unix/linux commands already have documentation built into the operating system.
$ man wc
... will show the documentation for wc.
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