An issue with ls and wc commands in Linux

An issue with ls and wc commands in Linux-Linux general technology-Linux technology and application information. For more information, see the following. Here is a question about the ls and wc commands:
[Qianxb @ aa qianxb] $ cat a. sh
#! /Bin/bash

Num = 'ls | wc-l'

New = q $ num

Echo $ new

The execution result is "q 2" with a space in the middle.
There are two problems in the middle:
1) ls displays only one row of results, but wc returns two rows.
2) there is a space in the middle of the final echo result

Question 1:
Execute the ls command, and the display is as follows:
[Qianxb @ aa qianxb] $ ls
A. sh s. pl
The ls command result is passed to wc in a pipeline. The result is as follows:
[Qianxb @ aa qianxb] $ ls | wc-l
2

The wc results show that there is a newline in the. sh and s. pl files displayed by ls ).
Redirects the ls output result to the file. The result is as follows:
[Qianxb @ aa qianxb] $ ls | tee
A. sh
S. pl

It is determined that although the result output by ls is displayed as a line on the screen, there is actually a line break in the middle.

Question 2:
There is a space in the result displayed by the wc command, so you need to remove it or use other commands.
Num = 'ls | wc-l | tr-d' [: blank:]''
Or
Num = 'ls | wc-l | awk '{print $1 }''

To sum up, modify the program
[Qianxb @ aa qianxb] $ cat a. sh
#! /Bin/bash

Num = 'ls | wc-l | tr-d' [: blank:]''
# Num = 'ls | wc-l | awk '{print $1 }''

New = q $ num

Echo $ new