Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Re: [Cs223] Number of Lines in a File in Stats.pl
Date: Saturday, 28 Mar 2020, 17:07:57

    > Message Posted By: Unknown
    >
    > It seems like in stats.pl, the number of lines in a file is determined by
    > the number of newline characters. ...

Corrext, since this is how the wc command counts lines.
=====

    >                              ...  So a file with nine lines of text, but
    > no trailing newline, is treated as 8 lines in the calculations. However,
    > adding a newline at the end of the file causes the file to be treated as 9
    > lines. ...

Correct.
=====

    >   ...  If our program sorts under the limit when the file has the newline
    > character at the end (so that the number of lines in the calculation
    > matches up with the number lines of text), should we be worried if our
    > number of pushes/pops is too high when there is no newline at the end?

No, since the only tests of efficiency use the file
Hwk4/Tests/f8192, which has a trailing newline.

The purpose of Hwk4/Stats.pl was to allow you to debug
your code on smaller files.  It was not intended to be
robust (e.g., to handle files without newlines).

--Stan-