Question

this is shell in MAC,
why is word count (wc) showing wrong character count?

sh-3.2# /Users/orly/Desktop/random.password.py 1
5
sh-3.2# /Users/orly/Desktop/random.password.py 1 | wc -m
       2
sh-3.2# 

Answer 1

There is probably a newline character in your file. That would explain a char count of 2.

ADDENDUM: Try this:

hexdump -C

on the “file”.

ADDENDUM 2:

In more detail:

$ echo "dog" | wc -m
   4
$ echo "dog" | hexdump -C
00000000  64 6f 67 0a                                       |dog.|
00000004

Make sense?