shell - Any way to see the number of lines in a file without opening the file? -

i have rather large text file (~45mb) , want know how many lines total has. since file large, takes long open text editor , check manually way. wondering if there shell command/shell script (i'd prefer tcsh answer since that's use) or other way "quickly" (meaning, more opening file , checking out end) determine how many lines text file has?

i in *nix environment.

wc -l filename 

it won't fast, since has read entire file count lines. there's no other way, since unix doesn't keep track of anywhere.