WC Chars Tool — Character Counting Utility#

Count characters in text with Unicode awareness. Supports total characters, non-whitespace characters, CJK character detection, and byte-offset reporting. Essential for validating text constraints (SMS, tweets, form fields, database column limits).

Quick Start#

bash

# Count characters in a string
wc-chars-tool "Hello, 世界!"

# Count from stdin
echo "Hello World" | wc-chars-tool

# Count characters in a file
wc-chars-tool --file document.txt

Usage#

bash

wc-chars-tool [TEXT] [OPTIONS]
wc-chars-tool --file FILE [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --file FILE       Read from file instead of argument
  --bytes           Count bytes instead of characters
  --no-whitespace   Exclude whitespace from count
  --cjk-only        Count only CJK characters
  --graphemes       Count grapheme clusters (user-perceived characters)
  --json            Output as structured JSON
  --detailed        Show breakdown: total, non-ws, digits, punct, spaces

Examples#

bash

# Count total characters
wc-chars-tool "Hello World"

# Count bytes in a UTF-8 string
wc-chars-tool "Hello, 世界!" --bytes

# Count non-whitespace characters
wc-chars-tool "Hello World" --no-whitespace

# Count CJK characters only
wc-chars-tool "Hello 你好 世界 world" --cjk-only

# Detailed breakdown
wc-chars-tool "Hello, 世界! 123" --detailed --json

Features#

• Unicode-aware — correctly handles multi-byte characters (CJK, emoji, accents)
• Grapheme clusters — counts user-perceived characters, not just code points
• Multiple modes — total, non-whitespace, CJK, byte count
• Detailed breakdown — digits, punctuation, spaces, letters
• File and stdin input — flexible input sources
• JSON output — for monitoring and script integration