top of page
Shell Script to Count Characters
Count characters in a string or file with a shell script.
Linux shell script allows user to create a script that read the files and make the report of Vowels, Blank Spaces, Characters, Number of lines, and symbol.
vi count_characters.sh
# !/bin/bash
file=$1
v=0
if [ $# -ne 1 ]
then
echo "$0 fileName"
exit 1
fi
if [ ! -f $file ]
then
echo "$file not a file"
exit 2
fi
# read vowels
exec 3<&0
while read -n 1 c
do
l="$(echo $c | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]')"
[ "$l" == "a" -o "$l" == "e" -o "$l" == "i" -o "$l" == "o" -o "$l" == "u" ] && (( v++ )) || :
done < $file
echo "Vowels : $v"
echo "Characters : $(cat $file | wc -c)"
echo "Blank lines : $(grep -c '^$' $file)"
echo "Lines : $(cat $file|wc -l )"
Here is the sample output of the above script
More ways to use count in file
You can use it without a loop to count vowels.
You can also use wc and case statements to execute.
bottom of page