wcは"word, line, character, and byte count"との説明通り、文字数や行数を数えるコマンドです。
原則オプションと組み合わせて使います。
-m The number of characters in each input file is written to the standard output. If the current locale does not support multibyte characters, this is equivalent to the -c option. This will cancel out any prior usage of the -c option.
$ printf '日本' | wc -m 2 $ printf 'japan' | wc -m 5
-c The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard output. This will cancel out any prior usage of the -m option.
$ printf '日本' | wc -c 6 $ printf 'japan' | wc -c 5
l
-l The number of lines in each input file is written to the standard output.
$ printf '日本' | wc -l 0 $ printf 'japan' | wc -l 0
複数ファイルをまとめてカウントしたい場合はxargsと組み合わせて使います。
$ grep rb | xargs wc -l