wc - Word Count Utility in Zig

A modern implementation of the classic Unix wc utility written in the Zig programming language. This tool counts lines, words, and characters in text files or from standard input.

Features

• Count lines, words, and characters in files or from stdin
• Selectively display only the counts you need
• Process multiple files at once with totals
• Clean, modular codebase with comprehensive test coverage

Installation

Prerequisites

• Zig compiler (0.13 or later recommended)

Building from Source

Clone the repository and build using Zig's build system:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/wc.git
cd wc
zig build

The executable will be available at zig-out/bin/wc.

Installing System-wide

zig build install

Usage

Usage: wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line if
more than one FILE is specified. If no FILE is specified, read standard input.

Options:
  -c      print the byte counts
  -l      print the newline counts
  -w      print the word counts
  -h, --help  display this help and exit

With no options, print line, word, and byte counts.

Examples

Count lines, words, and characters in a file:

wc file.txt

Count only lines in multiple files:

wc -l file1.txt file2.txt

Count words from standard input:

cat file.txt | wc -w

Project Structure

• src/main.zig: Entry point and main program flow
• src/counter.zig: Core counting functionality
• src/options.zig: Command-line options handling
• src/formatter.zig: Output formatting
• src/cli.zig: Command-line argument parsing
• build.zig: Build configuration

Development

Running Tests

zig build test

Building with Different Optimization Levels

# Debug build
zig build -Doptimize=Debug

# Release build
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

How It Works

The program reads input either from files specified on the command line or from standard input if no files are provided. It counts:

• Lines: The number of newline characters (\n)
• Words: Sequences of non-whitespace characters
• Characters: The total number of bytes

For each file, it displays the requested counts along with the filename. If multiple files are processed, a total line is displayed at the end.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the Unlicense License - see the LICENSE.txt file for details.