Re: bug in 'wc -l'

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

    >    I am sending you a patch to solve a 'problem' at the wc
    >    program.  When used with -l option (to count the number of
    >    lines) the last line isn't counted.
    > It counts occurences of '\n' (i.e. newline).  So I guess that
    > the behaviour is correct.

   If that's your definition of a line, obviously. However, the poster
   is probably right that the last line of a file should count as a
   line even if it lacks a final newline.

I was quoting the manual; `wc -l' counts how many times it hits a
`newline' (\n).  Not `lines' per see (since that is hard to define
exactly).

,----[ (coreutils)wc invocation ]
| `-l'
| `--lines'
|      Print only the newline counts.
`----


Cheers!