symbol count in a text file [iptables log]

[m.w.chang]

of course, your solution helped, too. thanks.

I also found a tool in freshmeat.net.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/wf/?topic_id=856
wf scans a text file or standard input and counts the frequency of words 
through the whole text, sending resulting output to stdout showing each 
word and corresponding frequency.
I found it with keywords "count word", in page 3 of the results.

Doing exactly the same thing, but much more generic, which is what I 
wanted. :(

> zcat messages.1.gz | cut -f6 -d\  - | sort | uniq -c
> 
> yields the following partial output:
>       1 snort
>       1 sr0:
>       1 sr1:
>       3 ttyS00
>      21 usb-uhci.c:
>      13 usb.c:
>       1 usbkbd.c:
>      15 vesafb:
>       1 vga16fb:
-- 
  Swiftly. Silently. Invisibly.  .~.   In Linux we trust.
                                / v \
  news://news.hkpcug.org       /( _ )\  http://www.linux-sxs.org
                                 ^ ^