[p9idf]

I checked the Plan 9 tools, which are similar to the Unix ones. Though without access to Knuth's program, I can't draw a sensible conclusion from the following data.

  term% wc /sys/src/cmd/^(tr.c sort.c uniq.c sed.c)
      356     998    5993 /sys/src/cmd/tr.c
     1752    4526   28371 /sys/src/cmd/sort.c
      165     346    2185 /sys/src/cmd/uniq.c
     1455    4267   26848 /sys/src/cmd/sed.c
     3728   10137   63397 total

  term% wc <{man tr} <{man sort} <{man uniq} <{man sed}
       54     269    2028 /fd/8
      137     741    5542 /fd/7
       41     149    1225 /fd/6
      208    1078    8464 /fd/5
      440    2237   17259 total