How to get file size in byte using wc -C

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when I use the command to get the file size in bye using wc -c the command return two values, the size in byte and the file name, ex: the output for wc -c my_file is 322 my_file I need to get only the first value to use it if condition, and I need to use this specific command not any other one.. Any help please, thank you.

What I have tried:

wc -c my_file

Posted 30-May-20 5:53am

M.S.S.E

Updated 30-May-20 8:59am

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phil.o · Answer 1 · 2020-05-30T06:10:00

Solution 1

You can pipe awk[^] to isolate the size:

Bash

wc -c my_file | awk '{print $1}'

Posted 30-May-20 6:10am

phil.o

Comments

k5054 30-May-20 12:55pm

I've never used awk, except for the odd time when someone else's solution to a problem I was trying to solve used it, and I could copy and/or adapt to my situation. That being said, I thought there would be a awk one-liner that could get the file size. Googling around didn't provide any answers, but with a little help from a couple of different sites, I came up with this

awk 'BEGIN {sum=0} {sum+=length($0)+1} END {print sum}'

If you were going to stick with an awk only solution (probably out of sheer obstinacy), is there anything better?

phil.o 30-May-20 13:52pm

If the last line is not an empty line, you may be off by one (I'm not sure, though; this would need to be checked). In this case, this might overcome the issue:

awk 'BEGIN {sum=0} {sum+=length($0)} END {print sum+NR-1}'

k5054 · Answer 2 · 2020-05-30T06:37:00

There is no option not to print the file name, you'll need to use a pipe as phil.o showed. Some other options:

#use cat
cat my_file | wc -c

#use cut
wc -c my_file | cut -f1 -d ' '

#you could also use stat, if you don't want to use a pipe
stat -c "%s" my_file

If your file is UTF-8, and you need to get a count of the glyphs, then you probably want to stick with wc -m

I'm sure there's a number of other ways to get that answer too.

M.S.S.E · Answer 3 · 2020-05-30T09:00:00

Solution 3

I did it using this :

wc -c < my_file

Posted 30-May-20 9:00am