Count the number of characters, words and lines in PowerShell

Measure-Object do exactly that. You do have to specify the parameters you want measured for the characters, words and lines to be returned.

Example 3: Measure text in a text file

This command displays the number of characters, words, and lines in the Text.txt file. Without the Raw parameter, Get-Content outputs the file as an array of lines.

The first command uses Set-Content to add some default text to a file.

"One", "Two", "Three", "Four" | Set-Content -Path C:\Temp\tmp.txt
Get-Content C:\Temp\tmp.txt | Measure-Object -Character -Line -Word

Lines Words Characters Property
----- ----- ---------- --------
    4     4         15

Reference: Microsoft.Powershell.Utility/measure-object


Get-Content [FILENAME] | Measure-Object -Character

It counts the number of characters in the file.

Get-Content [FILENAME] | Measure-Object -Word

It counts the number of words in the file.

Get-Content [FILENAME] | Measure-Object -Line

It counts the number of lines in the file.