>>> wc is designed to work with text files, not binary files.
>> % tar cf - data | wc
> tar cf - data | dd bs=1 of=/dev/null
> should do the job, shouldn't it?

Hmm, probably.  Eventually.  At two syscalls per byte, it will take a
very long time if the archive is at all large.  But you're right, it
will do the job.

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