Count number of characters

Count number of characters in different approaches

BASH

Step1: Using Linux wc command

# print the character counts of txt files (contains the count of return symbol)
wc -m *.txt

# print the newline counts of txt files
wc -l *.txt

# print the whitespaces counts of txt files
grep -c ' ' *.txt

Step2: Check the Return symbol

• e.g. \r\n costs 2 characters

Step3: final formula

Number of characters (not contains the return symbol) = result of wc -m *.txt - result of wc -m *.txt * 2 - 1 (the last blank line costs 1 character) - number of the whitespaces