Thats not metadata. ls -l generally shows 1 byte extra than the number of characters you see in the file. This extra character is generally a new line character. You can check it with od -c <filename> In unix/Linux, a new line is stored at the end of each line. and the file will end with a new line(an empty file is an exception to this rule). In any case od -c filename will give you exact picture of what’s in there..
