NAME

iwc - return the number of lines, words and characters in a file as parameters

USAGE

iwc infile

PARAMETERS

infile = ""

Name of (text) file

(nlines) [int]

Parameter returning the number of lines in file 'infile'

(nwords) [int]

Parameter returning the number of words in file 'infile'

(nchars) [int]

Parameter returning the number of characters in file 'infile'

DESCRIPTION

Simple task returning the number of lines, words and characters in input (text) file 'infile' as integer valued task parameters. If the file does not exist, an error message is printed to the standard output and the number of lines, words and characters are returned as INDEF; if the file exists but is empty, they are returned as 0.

EXAMPLES

1. Return the number of lines in a list of images and test that there is no additional garbage in that list:

    rj>  iwc ("flat_V.lis") ; print (iwc.nlines)
    7
    rj>  print (iwc.nlines == iwc.nwords)
    yes

2. Test (in a script) to capture the case that a file is empty:

    iwc (inlis)
    if ( iwc.nlines == 0 ) error (1, "\""//inlis//"\" contains no data!")

REVISIONS

IWC v2.10, Jan 18 1996 [R.A. Jansen]

Original version of this task was a wrapper for Unix 'wc'; IRAF 2.10.4

IWC v2.10, Feb 4 1998 [RAJ]

Changed to use IRAF native task 'count' rather than an escape to Unix 'wc'; IRAF 2.10.4

IWC v2.12, Aug 5 2003 [RAJ]

Cleaned-up code a bit and wrote this help file; IRAF 2.12.1

BUGS

The behavior of IRAF native task 'count' may differ from that of unix 'wc' in the case of binary files.

SEE ALSO

count, scan