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.

Answer 1

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 > max ) max = NF; 
  if( NF < min ) min = NF;
} 
END { 
  print "Max=" max; 
  print "Min=" min; 
} ' myPipeDelimitedFile.dat