Now, we can use the ls command to tell us how many bytes (which is the same as a character, most of the time). But how does one find out how many words or lines are in a file? When our teachers tell us to write reports, they always say ``I want an N word report on ....''. So, there is a real need for counting words. And wc does that. It gives a report on the number of characters, lines and words in a file, regardless of the file's contents. These quantities are of dubious value for one of the system libraries, but fine for a straight text file.