You can get the size of a file with -s but that's not the same as the number of characters unless the file uses an encoding that is always one byte per character. 
#!/bin/perl 
use strict;
use warnings;

my $chars = 0;
my $lines = 0; 
while (<>) {
  $chars += length;
  $lines ++;
}

print "$chars $lines\n";

[download]
You can call this script with the files as standard input and standard output.

If you want to open the files within the Perl script instead use the open() function.

In reply to Re: Count the number of lines in a file by nobull
in thread Count the number of lines in a file by pastorizah

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