Question is in topic.. would I use awk? Thanks!

wc -l <file> | cut -d " " -f 2
or
cat <file> | wc -l

awk 'END{ print NR-1}' <file>


Cheers,
Tink

I am not sure if it is your code or something i did but it prints it a little bit weird

#!/bin/csh
#NAME OF SCRIPT: search.scr

if ($#argv != 2) then
echo "Requires two file arguments"
echo "Usage: $0 search_word file_name"
exit 1
endif
if (! -r $argv[2]) then
echo "The file can not be read"
endif
#grep -n $argv[1] $argv[2]

cat $argv[2] | wc -l

awk 'END{ print NR-1}' $argv[2]

co-sun12% cat test.txt
Hi. This is a test message and should be ignored.
co-sun12% ./search.scr something test.txt
1
0




Why is there a tab before the 1 and what is the 0?

The tab is because of wc command (check out the man). Can be removed by:

cat test.txt |wc -l |tr -d " "

The zero is because of NR-1 (no. of records -1). You should use:

awk 'END{ print NR}' $argv[2]

HTH.

so the cat and the awk command do the same thing? not in general i mean but in that code.

Yes, they do ... I posted them as alternatives.

As for the -1 in the awk ... I put it in because
my test file didn't have a terminating new-line,
and awk output 1 line more than wc ... :)

Which means that (without a more complex
awk script) the cat | wc combo win :)



Cheers,
Tink