Leading spaces from wc --lines

[Bryce Nesbitt (mailing list account)]

The "wc" command always seems to place leading spaces on all results, 
for example:

hardhat:Log> wc 1
    79     174    1579 1
hardhat:Log> wc --lines 1
    79 1

Is there a way to get "wc --lines" to return just the number for easy 
scripting, e.g.:

hardhat:Log> wc --lines 1
79

If not, is there a chance this can be changed?