difference between wc -c and -m

kpraveen455 · 07-13-2009, 09:14 AM

Hi All,

I was reading man page of "wc" and not able to figure out what is the difference between options (-c and -m)

-c, --bytes
print the byte counts

and
-m, --chars
print the character counts

Please, anybody could clarify me.... (I am just confused)

David1357 · 07-13-2009, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kpraveen455

I was reading man page of "wc" and not able to figure out what is the difference between options (-c and -m)

It comes down to how line endings are counted:

Article from Linux Journal about wc

chrism01 · 07-14-2009, 01:38 AM

I can't test this theory, but I'd have thought the different switches would come in useful when looking at multi-byte charsets eg Japanese/Korean/Chinese.