Ttyjfyk

What did it mean to "align" a radio?

Can you compress metal and what would be the consequences?

Interpreting the 2019 New York Reproductive Health Act?

How to check whether the reindex working or not in Magento?

What are the motivations for publishing new editions of an existing textbook, beyond new discoveries in a field?

Reference request: Oldest number theory books with (unsolved) exercises?

What does ひと匙 mean in this manga and has it been used colloquially?

Return to UK after having been refused entry years ago

Is a "Democratic" Oligarchy-Style System Possible?

Falsification in Math vs Science

Have you ever entered Singapore using a different passport or name?

Feature engineering suggestion required

What is the motivation for a law requiring 2 parties to consent for recording a conversation

Am I thawing this London Broil safely?

What to do when moving next to a bird sanctuary with a loosely-domesticated cat?

How are circuits which use complex ICs normally simulated?

Looking for Correct Greek Translation for Heraclitus

Does the shape of a die affect the probability of a number being rolled?

Why isn't the circumferential light around the M87 black hole's event horizon symmetric?

Does coating your armor in silver add any effects?

Did Scotland spend $250,000 for the slogan "Welcome to Scotland"?

If a Druid sees an animal’s corpse, can they Wild Shape into that animal?

How to answer pointed "are you quitting" questioning when I don't want them to suspect

When should I buy a clipper card after flying to OAK?

Why does wc -l tell me that this non-empty file has 0 lines?

.everyoneloves__top-leaderboard:empty,.everyoneloves__mid-leaderboard:empty,.everyoneloves__bot-mid-leaderboard:empty margin-bottom:0;

4

1

xclip/xsel are utilities that allow you to pipe clipboard output to the shell on Ubuntu. Unfortunately, they seem to fail in combination with the wc command.

Try this. Open a new file and type:

this is a line

without hitting the enter key at the end of the line.

Now, copy this text and try the following:

$ xsel -o | wc -l
0

The output is 0, when in fact it should be 1. Save the file (call it myfile.txt).

Now try:

$ cat myfile.txt | wc -l
1

The output is 1, as expected.

Why is the output 0 in the first case?

text-processing newlines wc

share|improve this question

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

add a comment | 

4

1

xclip/xsel are utilities that allow you to pipe clipboard output to the shell on Ubuntu. Unfortunately, they seem to fail in combination with the wc command.

Try this. Open a new file and type:

this is a line

without hitting the enter key at the end of the line.

Now, copy this text and try the following:

$ xsel -o | wc -l
0

The output is 0, when in fact it should be 1. Save the file (call it myfile.txt).

Now try:

$ cat myfile.txt | wc -l
1

The output is 1, as expected.

Why is the output 0 in the first case?

text-processing newlines wc

share|improve this question

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

add a comment | 

xclip/xsel are utilities that allow you to pipe clipboard output to the shell on Ubuntu. Unfortunately, they seem to fail in combination with the wc command.

Try this. Open a new file and type:

this is a line

without hitting the enter key at the end of the line.

Now, copy this text and try the following:

$ xsel -o | wc -l
0

The output is 0, when in fact it should be 1. Save the file (call it myfile.txt).

Now try:

$ cat myfile.txt | wc -l
1

The output is 1, as expected.

Why is the output 0 in the first case?

text-processing newlines wc

share|improve this question

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

this is a line

$ xsel -o | wc -l
0

$ cat myfile.txt | wc -l
1

share|improve this question

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

share|improve this question

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community♦

1

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

asked Jul 17 '13 at 18:51

CodeBlueCodeBlue

51751020

2 Answers
2

active

oldest

votes

4

The issue you're experiencing is that wc -l counts new lines. Since you haven't in fact typed the n there is in fact zero new lines.

excerpt from wc man page

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line
if more than one FILE is specified. With no FILE, or when FILE is -,
read standard input. A word is a non-zero-length sequence of
characters delimited by white space.

If you switch it around so that wc counts characters (-c) you'll see that it is in fact working just fine and can count the number of characters:

$ xsel -o | wc -c
14

Saving it to a file has the effect of adding a newline at the end of the file.

share|improve this answer

edited Jul 17 '13 at 19:20

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

add a comment | 

0

wc counts the end of line characters. The first time you just marked the text, not containing any end of line character. When you save the file, the editor appends an end of line character which is counted by wc.

share|improve this answer

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120

add a comment | 

Your Answer

StackExchange.ready(function()
var channelOptions =
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "106"
;
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function()
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled)
StackExchange.using("snippets", function()
createEditor();
);

else
createEditor();

);

function createEditor()
StackExchange.prepareEditor(
heartbeatType: 'answer',
autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
convertImagesToLinks: false,
noModals: true,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: null,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
imageUploader:
brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
allowUrls: true
,
onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
);



);

draft saved

draft discarded

Sign up or log in

StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);

Sign up using Google

Sign up using Facebook

Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

Name

Email

Required, but never shown

StackExchange.ready(
function ()
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2funix.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f83408%2fwhy-does-wc-l-tell-me-that-this-non-empty-file-has-0-lines%23new-answer', 'question_page');

);

Post as a guest

Name

Email

Required, but never shown

4

The issue you're experiencing is that wc -l counts new lines. Since you haven't in fact typed the n there is in fact zero new lines.

excerpt from wc man page

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line
if more than one FILE is specified. With no FILE, or when FILE is -,
read standard input. A word is a non-zero-length sequence of
characters delimited by white space.

If you switch it around so that wc counts characters (-c) you'll see that it is in fact working just fine and can count the number of characters:

$ xsel -o | wc -c
14

Saving it to a file has the effect of adding a newline at the end of the file.

share|improve this answer

edited Jul 17 '13 at 19:20

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

add a comment | 

4

The issue you're experiencing is that wc -l counts new lines. Since you haven't in fact typed the n there is in fact zero new lines.

excerpt from wc man page

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line
if more than one FILE is specified. With no FILE, or when FILE is -,
read standard input. A word is a non-zero-length sequence of
characters delimited by white space.

If you switch it around so that wc counts characters (-c) you'll see that it is in fact working just fine and can count the number of characters:

$ xsel -o | wc -c
14

Saving it to a file has the effect of adding a newline at the end of the file.

share|improve this answer

edited Jul 17 '13 at 19:20

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

add a comment | 

The issue you're experiencing is that wc -l counts new lines. Since you haven't in fact typed the n there is in fact zero new lines.

excerpt from wc man page

Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line
if more than one FILE is specified. With no FILE, or when FILE is -,
read standard input. A word is a non-zero-length sequence of
characters delimited by white space.

If you switch it around so that wc counts characters (-c) you'll see that it is in fact working just fine and can count the number of characters:

$ xsel -o | wc -c
14

Saving it to a file has the effect of adding a newline at the end of the file.

share|improve this answer

edited Jul 17 '13 at 19:20

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

$ xsel -o | wc -c
14

share|improve this answer

edited Jul 17 '13 at 19:20

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:14

slm♦slm

256k71544689

0

wc counts the end of line characters. The first time you just marked the text, not containing any end of line character. When you save the file, the editor appends an end of line character which is counted by wc.

share|improve this answer

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120

add a comment | 

0

wc counts the end of line characters. The first time you just marked the text, not containing any end of line character. When you save the file, the editor appends an end of line character which is counted by wc.

share|improve this answer

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120

add a comment | 

wc counts the end of line characters. The first time you just marked the text, not containing any end of line character. When you save the file, the editor appends an end of line character which is counted by wc.

share|improve this answer

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120

share|improve this answer

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120

answered Jul 17 '13 at 19:15

MarcoMarco

25.5k784120