On 9/5/21 07:37, Peng Yu wrote: > I got 1 instead of 2 in the following example. How to count the last > even when it does not end with a newline character? Thanks. > > $ printf 'a\nb'|wc -l > 1
A text file (in contrast to a binary file) must end on a newline character, otherwise the remainder after the last '\n' in the file is not an entire line. And that's what wc(1) effectively does (and says so in its man page): wc - print newline, word, and byte counts for each file ___________^^^^^^^_________________^^^^^^ If you'd like to treat the remainder as a line, then you have to add a newline character at the end. $ printf 'a\nb\n' | wc -l 2 Have a nice day, Berny
