Count the requests

Commands read and write text

Every command has two text streams: it reads from standard input (stdin) and writes to standard output (stdout). By default stdout goes to your screen, which is why you see a command's answer as soon as it finishes.

Your first tool is wc, short for word count. On its own it prints lines, words and bytes; -l switches it to lines only:

wc -l access.log
#  5 access.log

It prints the count, then the file it counted. A log has one request per line, so counting lines counts requests: a quick answer to "how busy was the server?"

This sandbox has an access.log with a few requests in it. Type a single command into the terminal and press Enter.