Question

I am trying to get the line count to a variable. The source file filename.dat contains 2 lines of records as:

112233;778899

445566

Script 1

line_cnt=$(more /home/filename.dat | wc -l)
echo $line_cnt

When I run this script, I get the output of 2. Now, I have a modified version:

Script 2

filename=/home/filename.dat
line_cnt=$(more ${filename} | wc -l)
echo $line_cnt

The input file has the same records. But this is giving me an output of 5 even though it has only 2 records.

Can someone tell me what is wrong?

Edit – Corrected the file path in 2nd script

Answer 1

line_cnt=`cat ${filename} | wc -l`

The cat ${filename} | wc -l should be within back quotes.