How do I count the number of rows and columns in a file using bash

Question

Say I have a large file with many rows and many columns  I d like to find out how many rows and columns I have using bash

User · Answer

Little twist to kirill igum s answer  and you can easily count the number of columns of any certain row you want  which was why I ve come to this question  even though the question is asking for the whole file   Though if your file has same columns in each line this also still works of course    head -2 file  tail -1  tr   t    n   wc -l   Gives the number of columns of row 2  Replace 2 with 55 for example to get it for row 55   -bash-4 2  cat file 1       2       3 1       2       3       4 1       2 1       2       3       4       5  -bash-4 2  head -1 file  tail -1  tr   t    n   wc -l 3 -bash-4 2  head -4 file  tail -1  tr   t    n   wc -l 5   Code above works if your file is separated by tabs  as we define it to  tr   If your file has another separator  say commas  you can still count your  columns  using the same trick by simply changing the separator character  t  to       -bash-4 2  cat csvfile 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 -bash-4 2  head -2 csvfile  tail -1  tr        n   wc -l 2

User · Answer

If counting number of columns in the first is enough  try the following    awk -F  t    print NF  exit   myBigFile tsv  where  t is column delimiter

User · Answer

Following code  will do  the  job  and  will allow  you to specify field delimiter   This is  especially useful for files containing  more than 20k lines    awk  BEGIN      FS         min 10000          if  NF  gt  max   max   NF     if  NF  lt  min   min   NF     END      print  Max   max     print  Min   min       myPipeDelimitedFile dat

User · Answer

awk  BEGIN FS     END print  COLUMN NO   NF   ROWS NO   NR   file   You can use any delimiter as field separator and can find numbers of ROWS and columns

User · Answer

You can use bash  Note for very large files in terms of GB  use awk wc  However it should still be manageable in performance for files with a few MB   declare -i count 0 while read do       count     done  lt  file     echo  line count   count

User · Answer

Simple row count is   wc -l   file     Use   wc -lL   file   to show both the number of lines and the number of characters in the longest line

User · Answer

A very simple way to count the columns of the first line in pure bash  no awk  perl  or other languages    read -r line  lt   input file ncols  echo  line   wc -w    This will work if your data are formatted appropriately

User · Answer

Columns  awk   print NF   file   sort -nu   tail -n 1  Use head -n 1 for lowest column count  tail -n 1 for highest column count   Rows  cat file   wc -l or wc -l  lt  file for the UUOC crowd

User · Answer

If your file is big but you are certain that the number of columns remains the same for each row  and you have no heading  use   head -n 1 FILE   awk   print NF     to find the number of columns  where FILE is your file name   To find the number of lines  wc -l FILE  will work

User · Answer

For rows you can simply use wc -l file -l stands for total line for columns uou can simply use head -1 file   tr  quot   quot   quot  n quot    wc -l Explanation head -1 file Grabbing the first line of your file  which should be the headers  and sending to it to the next cmd through the pipe   tr  quot   quot   quot  n quot  tr stands for translate  It will translate all   characters into a newline character  In this example   is your delimiter  Then it sends data to next command  wc -l Counts the total number of lines

User · Answer

head -1 file tsv  head -1 train tsv  tr   t    n   wc -l   take the first line  change tabs  or you can use     instead of   t  for commas   count the number of lines

User · Answer

Perl solution   perl -ane   maxc     F if   F  gt   maxc  END  maxc    print  max columns   maxc nrows     n    file  If your input file is comma-separated   perl -F  -ane   maxc     F if   F  gt   maxc  END  maxc    print  max columns   maxc nrows     n    file  output   max columns  5 rows  2   -a autosplits input line to  F array   F is the number of columns -1 -F  field separator of   instead of whitespace    is the line number  number of rows

User · Answer

Alternatively to count columns  count the separators between columns  I find this to be a good balance of brevity and ease to remember  Of course  this won t work if your data include the column separator   head -n1 myfile txt   grep -o       wc -l   Uses head -n1 to grab the first line of the file  Uses grep -o to to count all the spaces  and output each space found on a new line  Uses wc -l to count the number of lines

[bash] How do I count the number of rows and columns in a file using bash?

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