linux - Why does the wc command count one more character than expected?

Question

The following is the content stored in my file

This is my Input

So, using wc -c command we can get the number of characters stored in the file.

My expected output for above file that edited by using Vim in Ubuntu is 16. But, wc -c command returns 17.

Why is the output like this? There isn't even a carriage return at end of line. So, what is the 17th character?

Answer 1

Of course you had enter. Maybe you can't see it. Consider these two examples:

echo -n "This is my Input" | wc -c
16

Because -n is for avoiding enter, but

echo "This is my Input" | wc -c
17

Look at this example too see the new line:

How to see newline?

echo "This is my Input" | od -c

od dumps files in octal and other formats. -c selects ASCII characters or backslash escapes.

And here is an example for file and usage of od: