wc feature request

[A B]

Many thanks for all the much needed contributions to society as a whole.

I did have one feature to request for wc, which I think would be highly 
complementary to grep’s -q flag. It would be really cool if wc could have a -q 
flag as well, which could return matches within a predefined threshold as the 
exit code itself. So for example, if I wrote ‘wc -l -q’ at the end of a pipe, 
then no output would be returned, but the exit  code would return a 3 if three 
lines were found. I understand there’s quite a bit more lifting to add -q to wc 
than to grep considering the extra bounds check requirement and verifying that 
only one of the corresponding wc flags are chosen, but I can dream at least.

Forgive the intrusion, gentleman. I just love the grep -q flag, maybe a little 
too much. And as much as computing doesn’t always offer this, I find it 
extremely satisfying as a computer scientist and a mathematician when tools 
have parallel applications. 

Thanks again for everything.

-Alex Boese 
202-436-9888