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#1 2014-10-28 15:00:08
- sharkwouter
- Member
- Registered: 2013-11-30
- Posts: 6
[Solved]Weird behaviour echo and printf
The manual page of echo states that you can print newlines if you use the -e option by adding \n to the string, but That isn't working for me. When running "/bin/echo -e top\nbottom" the output will be "topnbottom". Same with printf, running "/usr/bin/printf top\nbottom" give me the output "topnbottom".
This might be specific to bash, since it does print a newline when using fish shell. Those are the only 2 shells installed on my system, though.
What is causing this? It shouldn't be using the buildin echo and printf like that.
Last edited by sharkwouter (2014-10-28 15:23:10)
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#2 2014-10-28 15:20:40
- Nietzsche
- Member
- Registered: 2014-10-26
- Posts: 15
Re: [Solved]Weird behaviour echo and printf
Looks like your string must be quoted ("string") in order for echo to interpret special characters.
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#3 2014-10-28 15:22:45
- sharkwouter
- Member
- Registered: 2013-11-30
- Posts: 6
Re: [Solved]Weird behaviour echo and printf
Looks like your string must be quoted ("string") in order for echo to interpret special characters.
Oh wow, you are right. Thanks for that one.
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#4 2014-10-28 15:31:40
- Trilby
- Inspector Parrot
- Registered: 2011-11-29
- Posts: 30,543
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Re: [Solved]Weird behaviour echo and printf
Alternatively you can escape the slash:
$ echo -e "one\ntwo"
one
two
$ echo -e one\\ntwo
one
two"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman
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