How to do it...

The wc command supports options to count the number of lines, words, and characters:

1. Count the number of lines:

      $ wc -l file

1. To use stdin as input, use this command:

      $ cat file | wc -l

1. Count the number of words:

      $ wc -w file
      $ cat file | wc -w

1. Count the number of characters:

      $ wc -c file
      $ cat file | wc -c

 To count the characters in a text string, use this command:

      echo -n 1234 | wc -c
      4

 Here, -n deletes the final newline character.

1. To print the number of lines, words, and characters, execute wc without any options:

      $ wc file
      1435   15763  112200

Those are the number of lines, words, and characters.

1. Print the length of the longest line in a file with the -L option:

      $ wc file -L
      205