The wc -l gives wrong result

Question

I got wrong result from the wc -l command. After a long :( checking a found the core of the problem, here is the simulation:

$ echo "line with end" > file
$ echo -n "line without end" >>file
$ wc -l file
       1 file

here are two lines, but missing the last "\n". Any easy solution?

Amargo

any reason for using echo -n and why you can not add \n at the end of echo -n? – Kenakenaf

The above is an SIMULATION of the problem. I don't make the files, only working with them. I got them without the last enter. – Amargo

Don't use a screwdriver to drive in nails when there's a hammer in your toolkit :-) You may think that's two lines but the doco for wc disagrees. – Knar

Answer 1

For the wc line is what ends with the "\n" char. One of solutions is grep-ing the lines. The grep not looking for the ending NL.

e.g.

$ grep -c . file        #count the occurrence of any character
2

the above will not count empty lines. If you want them, use the

$ grep -c '^' file      #count the beginnings of the lines
2

Reticulum

Answer 2

from man page of wc

 -l, --lines
              print the newline counts

form man page of echo

 -n     do not output the trailing newline

so you have 1 newline in your file and thus wc -l shows 1.

You can use the following awk command to count lines

 awk 'END{print NR}' file

Kenakenaf