Hi, On Fri, 2010-04-30 at 07:46 -0700, adrian kok wrote: > Hi all > > I have big file as below > and would like to know how many line eg: wc -l file > but can't figure out how to know > > If I type wc -l file, I only get the 1023 but it includes the space > When I use cat file | tr -d "\r \n". it gives me "adrian alice......" > I need it as fileB and then wc -l fileB. > If those lines between the names are empty lines you might try : cat bigfile | egrep -v '^$' | wc -l or if you want the names into a second file : cat bigfile | egrep -v '^$' > fileB Regards, Michel