On 13/07/2026 23:07, Collin Funk wrote:
Pádraig Brady <[email protected]> writes:
On 13/07/2026 18:55, Collin Funk wrote:
Pádraig Brady <[email protected]> writes:
On 13/07/2026 01:20, Dan Jacobson wrote:
NAME
wc - print newline, word, and byte counts for each file
^character,
The above was trying to summarize the functionality and default mode.
If you add character, then you'd probably have to also mention the -L
functionality, i.e.:
wc - print newline, word, byte, character counts, or maximum line width
It's a bit wordy TBH, so I'm not sure.
I couldn't think of a way to make it not sound wordy either. POSIX
has
this [1]:
wc - word, line, and byte or character count
But that sounds a little strange to me. I think it is the double
conjunctions, "and" and "or".
Collin
[1]
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/wc.html
It's a bit better than what we have,
so let's just go with the POSIX wording.
Applying the following patch makes the lines in the info pages too
long. Not sure if you have an idea to avoid that.
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 5cc831f84..8d3f70a35 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@
* uptime: (coreutils)uptime invocation. Print uptime and load.
* users: (coreutils)users invocation. Print current user names.
* vdir: (coreutils)vdir invocation. List directories verbosely.
-* wc: (coreutils)wc invocation. Line, word, and byte counts.
+* wc: (coreutils)wc invocation. Line, word, and byte or
character counts.
* who: (coreutils)who invocation. Print who is logged in.
* whoami: (coreutils)whoami invocation. Print effective user ID.
* yes: (coreutils)yes invocation. Print a string indefinitely.
@@ -261,7 +261,7 @@ @node Top
Summarizing files
-* wc invocation:: Print newline, word, and byte counts
+* wc invocation:: Print newline, word, and byte or charcter
counts
* sum invocation:: Print checksum and block counts
* cksum invocation:: Print CRC checksum and byte counts
* md5sum invocation:: Print or check MD5 digests
diff --git a/man/wc.x b/man/wc.x
index e1d9b4bf7..6ff1f819d 100644
--- a/man/wc.x
+++ b/man/wc.x
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
[NAME]
-wc \- print newline, word, and byte counts for each file
+wc \- print newline, word, and byte or character counts for each file
[DESCRIPTION]
.\" Add any additional description here
Ok I pushed a change to be concise where needed,
and more verbose where appropriate.
https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/a4d74bb6d
marking this as done.
cheers,
Padraig
