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On the off chance that someone finds themselves beating their head against the wall trying to figure out why a coworker's script won't print newlines, look out for this:
#!/bin/bash
function GET_RECORDS()
echo -e "starting\n the process";
echo $(GET_RECORDS);
As in the above, the actual running of the method may itself be wrapped in an echo which supersedes any echos that may be in the method itself. Obviously, I watered this down for brevity. It was not so easy to spot!
You can then inform your comrades that a better way to execute functions would be like so:
#!/bin/bash
function GET_RECORDS()
echo -e "starting\n the process";
GET_RECORDS;
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http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/echo.html
-e is not defined and backslashes are implementation defined:
If the first operand is -n, or if any of the operands contain a <backslash> character, the results are implementation-defined.
unless you have an optional XSI extension.
So I recommend that you should use printf instead, which is well specified:
format operand shall be used as the format string described in XBD File Format Notation [...]
the File Format Notation:
\n <newline> Move the printing position to the start of the next line.
Also keep in mind that Ubuntu 15.10 and most distros implement echo both as:
a Bash built-in: help echo
a standalone executable: which echo
which can lead to some confusion.
For only the question asked (not special characters etc) changing only double quotes to single quotes.
echo -e 'Hello,\nWorld!'
Results in:
Hello,
World!
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This works both inside a script and from the command line.
On the command line, press Shift+Enter to do the line break inside the string.
This works for me on my macOS and my Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) system.
There is a new parameter expansion added in Bash 4.4 that interprets escape sequences:
${parameter@operator} - E operator
The expansion is a string that is the value of parameter with
backslash escape sequences expanded as with the $'…' quoting
mechanism.
$ foo='hello\nworld'
$ echo "${foo@E}"
hello
world
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-e option will interpret backslahes for the escape sequence
-n option will remove the trailing newline in the output
PS: the command echo has an effect of always including a trailing newline in the output so -n is required to turn that thing off (and make it less confusing)
Output:
WARNING : 2 WARNINGS FOUND:\nWarning, found the following local orphaned signature file:
On my Bash script I was getting mad as you until I've just tried:
echo "WARNING : $warningsFound WARNINGS FOUND:
$warningStrings"
Just hit Enter where you want to insert that jump. The output now is:
WARNING : 2 WARNINGS FOUND:
Warning, found the following local orphaned signature file:
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If you're writing scripts and will be echoing newlines as part of other messages several times, a nice cross-platform solution is to put a literal newline in a variable like so:
newline='
echo "first line${newline}second line"
echo "Error: example error message n${newline}${usage}" >&2 #requires usage to be defined
If the previous answers don't work, and there is a need to get a return value from their function:
function foo()
local v="Dimi";
local s="";
.....
s+="Some message here $v $1\n"
.....
echo $s
r=$(foo "my message");
echo -e $r;
Only this trick worked on a Linux system I was working on with this Bash version:
GNU bash, version 2.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)
This got me there....
outstuff=RESOURCE_GROUP=[$RESOURCE_GROUP]\\nAKS_CLUSTER_NAME=[$AKS_CLUSTER_NAME]\\nREGION_NAME=[$REGION_NAME]\\nVERSION=[$VERSION]\\nSUBNET-ID=[$SUBNET_ID]
printf $outstuff
Yields:
RESOURCE_GROUP=[akswork-rg]
AKS_CLUSTER_NAME=[aksworkshop-804]
REGION_NAME=[eastus]
VERSION=[1.16.7]
SUBNET-ID=[/subscriptions/{subidhere}/resourceGroups/makeakswork-rg/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/aks-vnet/subnets/aks-subnet]
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Sometimes you can pass multiple strings separated by a space and it will be interpreted as \n.
For example when using a shell script for multi-line notifcations:
#!/bin/bash
notify-send 'notification success' 'another line' 'time now '`date +"%s"`
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Additional solution:
In cases, you have to echo a multiline of the long contents (such as code/ configurations)
For example:
A Bash script to generate codes/ configurations
echo -e,
printf might have some limitation
You can use some special char as a placeholder as a line break (such as ~) and replace it after the file was created using tr:
echo ${content} | tr '~' '\n' > $targetFile
It needs to invoke another program (tr) which should be fine, IMO.
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