tr is surprisingly useful. If you're clever, the -c and -d flags can do good things. wc is also useful, mostly as "wc -l". If you keep data in line oriented, h

tr is surprisingly useful. If you're clever, the -c and -d flags can do good things. wc is also useful, mostly as "wc -l". If you keep data in line oriented, human readable form, "wc -l" counts data items.