Is there an equivalent for wc -l to have the number of columns of a vim file? (I have a file with several rows and columns separated by spaces)
Considering that you have equal number of columns in all the rows, this should work for you:
awk -F' ' '{print NF; exit}' <filename>
awk is a patter scanning language
-F is the field separator; ' ' tells awk that columns are space separated. This will work even if there is more than one space between two columns.
print NF; exit prints the number of fields and exits
Caveat: This will report the number of columns in the first line only.
Refer to awk manual for more options.
Source: Similar question on SO
