Subject: bug#9449: closed (Re: bug#9449: Bug report on 'wc' : characters count adds one character)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:30:03 +0000

Your bug report

#9449: Bug report on 'wc' : characters count adds one character

which was filed against the coreutils package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

-- 
9449: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=9449
GNU Bug Tracking System
Contact [email-masked] with problems

Subject: Re: bug#9449: Bug report on 'wc' : characters count adds one character
From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
To: Laurent TARRISSE <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:25:28 -0600
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

tag 9449 notabug
thanks

On 09/06/2011 07:49 AM, Laurent TARRISSE wrote:
>> echo toto | wc --chars
> 5

Thanks for the report; however, this is correct.  wc is counting the 
newline output by echo.

Try these to see the difference:

$ printf toto | wc --chars
4
$ echo toto | od -tx1z

> Why does 'wc' add one character ?

It doesn't.  Echo does.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

Subject: Bug report on 'wc' : characters count adds one character
From: "Laurent TARRISSE" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2011 15:49:24 +0200
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

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