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I open a file using vim in ubuntu, and this is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

"file.py" [noeol] 553L, 16620C

What does noeol indicate ?

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migrated from serverfault.com Feb 16 at 3:15

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2 Answers

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Unix editors like vi and vim will always put newlines (\n) at the end of every line - especially including the last line. If there is no end-of-line (eol) on the last line, then it is an unusual situation and the file most certainly was not created by a standard UNIX editor.

This unusual situation is brought to your notice by the [noeol] flag in the vim editor; other editors probably have similar flags and notifications.

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up vote 13 down vote

That the last line in the file doesn't have a newline (\n)

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@Bon Ami: Some programs, when reading your text file, need the \n at the end of line to consider it as a completed line (with a trailing newline char). The following example shows a file which may look like a complete line at a casual glance in a text editor, but wc does not condider it as a line: printf "x">"file-no-newline"; wc -l <"file-no-newline" -- Outpute is: 0 .. the noeol is just a visual aid to let you know the status.. – Peter.O Feb 16 at 4:50
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