wc -m in unix adds one character

Question

Counting a line with 4 characters with no new line character:

ACTG

wc -m gives me 5. With echo, I can fix this problem so

Answer 1

As hexdump has shown you, whatever editor you are using is adding a '\n' or 0x0A (new line) character at the end of the line when you save the file, even if you aren't writing one explicitly.

See: http://www.asciitable.com/