Berkeley Review OCHEM I Exam Q issue

[southpawcannon]

For those who are using TBR, Practice Exam Passage 1, #6 in my review here has hydrochloric acid in the question with C as the correct answer. Yet, in the solution, it is stated that 'when an ester is treated with acidic water, it undergoes hydrolysis. The products after adding water are an alcohol and a carboxylic acid.' No where is Chloride shown in the image of the reaction. Was there perhaps a typo in the question, or am I misunderstanding the concept?

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[DrknoSDN]

(Without looking at the image). I would say that you have to consider that the conjugate base of a strong acid (HCl) does nothing in solution. It is just a spectator so they probably did not write chloride ion anywhere because it does not have any relevance to the reaction.

HCl is just a source of H+ (H3O+) used to catalyze the reaction.