[SOLVED] How to get the average number of words in files using the output of "wc -w"

Issue

I'm listing the number of words in a bunch of files and sorting it like this:

wc -w *.tex | sort -rn

which outputs a nice list of the files and word count for each file

   17423 total
    6481 panama-to-colombia.tex
    5516 the-salt-flats.tex
    5426 hiking-cordillera-huayhuash.tex

How can I also calculate and display the average number of words per file? i.e. a line at the bottom like:

5808 AVERAGE

Note: I'd like to find a solution that works for an arbitrary number of files in the list.

Solution

I suggest to append to your code:

| awk '{sum=sum+$1; print};END{print sum/2/(NR-1),"AVERAGE"}'

Answered By - Cyrus

Answer Checked By - Senaida (WPSolving Volunteer)