Help! Count lines of output using wc -l

dan-e · 10-12-2011, 10:27 PM

Hi all,

I need to run a bunch of commands seperated by ; but then count the total lines of output. Pipes and redirection don't seem to be helping me. Anyone know how I can do this properly:

ls /usr/bin/nslookup | ls /usr/sbin/lsof | ls /sbin/ifconfig | ls /usr/sbin/dmidecode | ls /sbin/ethtool | ls /bin/netstat | wc -l

... assuming all files exist I would like to see '6' as the result. But I get '1' because it's not aggregating the output all the way to the wc. Same result if I use & or > between commands instead of |

Help?

macemoneta · 10-12-2011, 10:48 PM

Code:

ls -1 /usr/bin/nslookup /usr/sbin/lsof /sbin/ifconfig /usr/sbin/dmidecode /sbin/ethtool /bin/netstat | wc -l

dan-e · 10-12-2011, 10:54 PM

heh, well that simplifies things. Thankyou sire!

jschiwal · 10-12-2011, 11:34 PM

Do you want to combine the output of a group of commands, so the output of all can be redirected (or used as in `wc -l)?

You can group the commands by either executing them in a subshell (...) or grouping them inside curly brackets. The output of each statement inside will be effected by redirecting STDOUT outside the braces or parentheses.