How to strip off the leading filename from 'wc -l' command

Hi... can anyone please tell how do i strip off the leading filename from the wc -l command....

when i fire command

wc -l new1

... its giving output as

     14 new1

i want the output as just '14'...

i need to use this value in the calculations in the later part of the script..

thanks in advance,
Swapnil

wc -l new1 | awk -F' ' '{print $1}'

or

wc -l <new1

thank you...

i used the second code and got the output as i wanted...