It seems that whenever STDIN is involved the results padding reverts to the BSD-style 7/8 padding. When files are given as input (excluding STDIN) the padding reflects the width of the largest count. When files are given as input and one of these is "-", the padding reverts again to the BSD 7/8 padding.
System: Arch Linux (package: core/coreutils 8.23-1) =================== $ wc --version wc (GNU coreutils) 8.23 Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html >. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by Paul Rubin and David MacKenzie. =================== Actual: =================== $ echo "some text" > test.txt $ printf %s "one\ntwo\nthree" | wc - test.txt 3 3 14 - 1 2 10 test.txt 4 5 24 total =================== Expected: =============== $ echo "some text" > test.txt $ printf %s "one\ntwo\nthree" | wc - test.txt 3 3 14 - 1 2 10 test.txt 4 5 24 total ===================
