Counting number of lines in a file using grep and wc

Question

I am trying to display a number of lines in a file using grep and word count (wc -l) with a pipe.

I tried many different methods but neither of them wordked. The file is in /home/[User]/[Folder]/[File Name.Extension].

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Thanks,

I have to use both grep and wc -l. it works when i only use wc -l but I am required to use grep and wc -l with a pipe. I tried to do that but I couldn't get it working — user3444913, Nov 06 '14 at 03:41
I tried grep /home/[User]/[Folder]/[File Name.Extension]/ | wc -l This did not work — user3444913, Nov 06 '14 at 03:42
I am expecting it to display the count of the number of lines — user3444913, Nov 06 '14 at 03:47

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 06 '14 at 06:47

You don't need grep to count the number of lines, wc is sufficient :

wc -l filename

should work.

grep is useful only if you wan't to filter the file content, say you want to count the number of lines that contain the word life, then :

grep "life" filename | wc -l

will give you the results.

1 Answers1