[Bug 249522] wc(1) prints leading spaces before the count, which appears to not be POSIX-compliant

bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org
Tue Sep 22 11:01:26 UTC 2020


https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=249522

            Bug ID: 249522
           Summary: wc(1) prints leading spaces before the count, which
                    appears to not be POSIX-compliant
           Product: Base System
           Version: CURRENT
          Hardware: Any
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Keywords: standards
          Severity: Affects Only Me
          Priority: ---
         Component: bin
          Assignee: bugs at FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: 0mp at FreeBSD.org

This document[1] suggests that there should be no leading whitespace characters
printed before the count. Also, this is how GNU wc behaves, e.g.:

```
$ echo 123 | wc -c
4
```

The FreeBSD wc(1) works like this, however:

```
$ echo 123 | wc -c
       4
```

Our behaviour tends to be the source of bugs when people try to do things like
this:

```
if [ "$(wc -l file)" -gt 10 ]; then ...
```

[1]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/wc.html

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