What is the Windows equivalent of "wc -l"?
The Linux/Unix "line count" command, wc -l
, has a Windows equivalent of find /c /v ""
.
How does this work?
According to Raymond Chen of the The Old New Thing, this functions as such since
It is a special quirk of the
find
command that the null string is treated as never matching.
The inverted (/v
) count (/c
) thus effectively counts all the lines;
hence, the line count.
Example usage
To count the number of modified files in a subversion working copy:
svn status -q | find /c /v ""
Such a command can be used to mark a build as "dirty" if the count is not 0
, i.e., there are uncommitted changes in the working copy.
To obtain a line count of all your Java files:
(for /r %f in (*.java) do @type "%f") | find /c /v ""
The command find /c /v ""
can also be added to a batch file if required.
Remember to duplicate the %
characters in batch files.
PowerShell
A working PowerShell equivalent is Measure-Object -line
with some additional formatting required, e.g., (directory listing for simplicity),
(ls | Measure-Object -line).Lines
In PowerShell, to obtain a line count of all your java files:
type *.java | Measure-Object -line