_WC
— Returns the number of
contiguous series of non-blank characters in the last file processed by
WORDS
.
Syntax:
%_WC
If the WORDS
command has not been called,
or if there was any error reading the last file, this variable returns the
value N/A
.
• Note: Unlike the other
variables set by WORDS
, _WC
does include any
Byte Order Mark at the start of a file. A BOM will be treated as a non-blank
character, and therefore count as a ‘word’ unto itself if the
following character is whitespace. This, to my mind, is stupid behavior; a
leading BOM should either be ignored altogether, or else treated as whitespace.
I count it this way only for compatibility with certain ports of the Unix
wc
.