wc stands for word count. As the name implies, it is mainly used for counting purpose. It is used to find out number of lines, word count, byte and characters count in the files specified in the file arguments. By default it displays four-columnar output.

What does wc do in Shell?

wc stands for Word Count, although it can also count characters and lines. This makes it a flexible tool for counting any kind of items. It is most commonly used to count the number of lines in a file, or (as with most Unix tools) in any other data sent to it, but it can count characters and words, too.

How does wc work in UNIX?

Another UNIX command is wc (word count). In its simplest form, wc reads characters from standard input until end-of-file, and prints to standard output a count of how many lines, words, and characters it has read. It prints the three counts on the same line, each in a field of width 8.