Hi, Documentation on 'wc' says: ---------------------------------------------- wc -m, --chars print the character counts ---------------------------------------------- But here follows the output I get: >echo toto | wc --chars 5 >echo five | wc --chars 5 >echo four | wc --chars 5 >echo f | wc --chars 2 >echo "" | wc --chars 1 Why does 'wc' add one character ? Thanks. ---------------------------------------------- UNIX VERSION: ---------------------------------------------- >uname -a Linux jdm-qualiac-srv-trv.midilibre.com 2.6.9-100.ELsmp #1 SMP Tue Feb 1 12:04:42 EST 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux >uname -r 2.6.9-100.ELsmp >cat /etc/issue Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 9) Kernel \r on an \m