echo
echo [OPTIONS]... [STRING]...
Display a line of text
Options
-n
-
do not output the trailing newline
-e
-
enable interpretation of backslash escapes
-E
-
disable interpretation of backslash escapes (default)
Echo the STRING(s) to standard output.
If -e is in effect, the following sequences are recognized:
\
backslash\a
alert (BEL)\b
backspace\c
produce no further output\e
escape\f
form feed\n
new line\r
carriage return\t
horizontal tab\v
vertical tab\0NNN
byte with octal value NNN (1 to 3 digits)\xHH
byte with hexadecimal value HH (1 to 2 digits)
Examples
Print a text message. Note: quotes are optional:
echo "{{Hello World}}"
Print a message with environment variables:
echo "{{My path is $PATH}}"
Print a message without the trailing newline:
echo -n "{{Hello World}}"
Append a message to the file:
echo "{{Hello World}}" >> {{file.txt}}
Enable interpretation of backslash escapes (special characters):
echo -e "{{Column 1\tColumn 2}}"
Print the exit status of the last executed command (Note: In Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell the equivalent commands are echo %errorlevel%
and $lastexitcode
respectively):
echo $?
The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.
Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.