In Linux, why does an empty file have a size of 0, but a text file with any content has a size the length of the content + 1?

Question

This may be a *nix thing, I'm not sure.

Solution 1

An extra byte is for the line end at the end of the file, it's quite common for Linux text editors to add this line end after the last line.

Solution 2

Probably a trailing new-line character. For example, a file created in a text editor containing only an 'a' may actually contain 2 bytes:

$ cat /tmp/test_text | hexdump -C
00000000  61 0a                                             |a.|
00000002

However, using echo -n (no new line) gives us a size of 1 byte:

$ echo -n 'a' > /tmp/test_text 
$ ls -l /tmp/test_text 
-rw-r--r--  1 redacted  redacted  1  1 Sep 21:09 /tmp/test_text
$ cat /tmp/test_text | hexdump -C
00000000  61                                                |a|
00000001

Comments

[Dana the Sane]

The gcc compiler even complains if this blank line is not there.

[Will Dixon]

Some text editors (e.g. vim) will also warn you if you don't have the EOL.