The Unix command line tools are a great metaphor for good software engineering and they follow the Unix Philosophies of:
Writing simple parts connected by clean interfaces - each tool does just one thing and provides a simple CLI that handles text input from either files or file streams. Design programs to be connected to other programs - each tool can be easily connected to other tools to create incredibly powerful compositions. Following these philosophies has made the simple unix command line tools some of the most widely used software engineering tools - allowing us to create very complex text data processing pipelines from simple command line tools. There’s even a Coursera course on Linux and Bash for Data Engineering.
You can read more about the Unix Philosophy in the excellent book The Art of Unix Programming.
The functional requirements for wc are concisely described by it’s man page - give it a go in your local terminal now:
man wc$ python3 wc.py -h
usage: wc.py [-h] [-v] [-f FILENAME] [-c] [-l] [-m] [-w]
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-v, --version show programs version number and exit
WC Arguments:
-f FILENAME, --filename FILENAME
The input file, or standard input (if no file is specified) to the standard output.
-c, --bytes The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard output.
-l, --lines The number of lines in each input file is written to the standard output.
-m, --characters The number of characters in each input file is written to the standard output.
-w, --words The number of words in each input file is written to the standard output.
To get addtional help on a specific provider run: python wc.py -h
ExitingPull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
Please make sure to update tests as appropriate.