get just the integer from wc in bash

Answer 1

wc $file | awk {'print $4" "$2" "$1'}

Adjust as necessary for your layout.

It's also nicer to use positive logic (is a file) over negative (not a directory)

[ -f $file ] && wc $file | awk {'print $4" "$2" "$1'}

Answer 2

You can use the cut command to get just the first word of wc's output (which is the line or word count):

lines=`wc -l $f | cut -f1 -d' '`
words=`wc -w $f | cut -f1 -d' '`

Answer 3

Try this:

wc `ls` | awk '{ LINE += $1; WC += $2 } END { print "lines: " LINE  " words: " WC }'

It creates a line count, and word count (LINE and WC), and increase them with the values extracted from wc (using $1 for the first column's value and $2 for the second) and finally prints the results.

Answer 4

If you redirect the filename into wc it omits the filename on output.

Bash:

read lines words characters <<< $(wc < filename)

or

read lines words characters <<EOF
$(wc < filename)
EOF

Instead of using for to iterate over the output of ls, do this:

for f in *

which will work if there are filenames that include spaces.

If you can't use globbing, you should pipe into a while read loop:

find ... | while read -r f

or use process substitution

while read -r f
do
    something
done < <(find ...)