Linux echo with new line

And so there really isn’t any general way to know how to write a newline with echo , except that you can generally rely on just doing echo to do so.

A bash shell typically does not conform to the specification, and handles the -n and other options, but even that is uncertain. You can do:

shopt -s xpg_echo echo hey\\nthere 

And not even that is necessary if bash has been built with the build-time option.

—enable-xpg-echo-default

Make the echo builtin expand backslash-escaped characters by default, without requiring the -e option. This sets the default value of the xpg_echo shell option to on , which makes the Bash echo behave more like the version specified in the Single Unix Specification, version 3. See Bash Builtins, for a description of the escape sequences that echo recognizes.

printf

On the other hand, printf ‘s behavior is pretty tame in comparison.

RATIONALE

The printf utility was added to provide functionality that has historically been provided by echo . However, due to irreconcilable differences in the various versions of echo extant, the version has few special features, leaving those to this new printf utility, which is based on one in the Ninth Edition system.

The EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section almost exactly matches the printf() function in the ISO C standard, although it is described in terms of the file format notation in XBD File Format Notation.

It handles format strings which describe its arguments — which can be any number of things, but for strings are pretty much either %b yte strings or literal %s trings. Other than the %f ormats in the first argument, it behaves most like a %b yte string argument, except that it doesn’t handle the \c escape.

echo() printf

You might write your own standards conformant echo like.

. which should pretty much always do the right thing automatically.

Actually, no. That prints a literal \n at the tail of the arguments if the last argument ends in an odd number of .

echo() case $ in (\ *) printf %b\\n "$*";; (*) IFS=\ $IFS printf %b\\n "$*" IFS=$ esac 

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How to echo a New Line in Bash Shell Scripts

Learn various ways of displaying a new line in the output of echo command in Linux.

The echo command automatically adds a new line at the end. That’s cool.

But what if you want to display just an empty new line? Or if you want to output something that contains a new line?

The good news is that, echo lets you use the newline character \n to print a new line within the same output line if you use the -e option:

echo -e "Name\nAddress\nPhone Number"

If you run the above command, you’ll get this output:

Name Address Phone Number

That’s nice, right? Let’s have a more detailed look into it.

Display new line with -e flag of echo command (recommended)

A newline is a term we use to specify that the current line has ended and the text will continue from the line below the current one. In most UNIX-like systems, \n is used to specify a newline. It is referred to as newline character.

The echo command, by default, disables the interpretation of backslash escapes. So if you try to display a newline using the ‘\n’ escape sequence, you will notice a problem.

$ echo Hello\nworld Hellonworld $ echo 'Hello\nworld' Hello\nworld

Enclosing text in single quotes as a string literal does not work either.

That was not an expected output. To actually print a new-line, you can use the ‘-e’ flag to tell the echo command that you want to enable the interpretation of backslash escapes.

$ echo -e 'Hello\nworld' Hello world

Nice, that’s what you are looking for.

Let me some other ways to display the newline character.

echo a variable containing new line

You can store a string in a bash variable and then echo it using the ‘-e’ flag.

$ str="Hello\nworld" $ echo -e $str Hello world

Use the ‘$’ character instead of -e flag

The dollar symbol, ‘$’ is called the «expansion» character in bash. This is the character that I used in the earlier example to refer to a variable’s value in shell.

If you look closely at the snippet below, you will realize that the expansion character, in this case, acts to hold a temporary value.

$ echo Hello$'\n'world Hello world

Or, you can use the whole string as a ‘temporary variable’:

$ echo $'Hello\nworld' Hello world

I would prefer to use the -e flag, though.

echo your echo to print something with new line

When you echo a piece of text, the echo command will automatically add a newline (and here is how you can prevent it) to the end of your text.

This means that you can chain multiple echo commands together to cause a newline.

$ echo Hello; echo world Hello world

Use printf to print newline in Bash shell

printf is another command line tool that essentially prints text to the terminal, but it also allows you to format your text.

The usage is very simple and similar to echo but a bit more reliable and consistent.

$ printf 'Hello\nworld\n' Hello world

As expected, you have a newline without using any flags.

Conclusion

Personally, I would prefer sticking with the -e flag or go for the printf command for displaying the new lines in output. I recommend you to do the same but feel free to experiment.

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How to Echo Newline in Bash

In Bash, there are multiple ways we can display a text in the console or terminal. We can use either the echo or printf command to print a text. Each of these commands has their unique behaviors.

In this guide, we’ll learn how to print a newline in Bash.

Newline in Bash

Before going further, here’s a quick refresh on what a newline is. It’s usually used to specify the end of a line and to jump to the next line. It’s expressed with the character “\n” in UNIX/Linux systems. Most text editors will not show it by default.

Printing Newline in Bash

There are a couple of different ways we can print a newline character. The most common way is to use the echo command. However, the printf command also works fine.

Using the backslash character for newline “\n” is the conventional way. However, it’s also possible to denote newlines using the “$” sign.

Printing Newline Using Echo

The echo command takes a string as input and prints it out on the console screen. To print any text, we use the echo command in the following manner:

As mentioned earlier, the newline character is “\n”, right? How about we try to include it directly with echo?

Well, that didn’t go as expected. What happened?

By default, the echo command will print the string provided, character by character. It doesn’t interpret backslash characters. However, we can fix this by adding the flag “-e”. It enables backslash character interpretation. Let’s fix the command and run it again:

Voila! Now it’s working as expected!

This technique also works when using Bash variables. Take a look at the following example:

$ sentence = «The \n Quick \n Brown \n Fox»

Printing Newline Using $

We can also use the “$” sign with the echo command to specify the newline character. This method is a bit more complex than the previous one. The explanation is best done with an example.

Run the following command:

• The given string isn’t inside double quotations.
• Before each newline character “\n”, we’re using the “$” sign.
• Each newline character “\n” is provided inside single quote.

Printing Newlines with Multiple Echo Statements

In this approach, we’re basically going to run multiple echo commands instead of one. By default, echo prints the given string and adds a newline character at the end. By running multiple echo statements at once, we’re taking advantage of that.

Let’s have a look at the following example.

• We’re running 4 echo commands.
• Each command is separated by a semicolon (;). It’s the default delimiter in Bash.

Printing Newline with Printf

Similar to echo, the printf command also takes a string and prints it on the console screen. It can be used as an alternative to the echo command.

Have a look at the following example.

As you can see, printf processes backslash characters by default, no need to add any additional flags. However, it doesn’t add an additional newline character at the end of the output, so we have to manually add one.

Final Thoughts

In this guide, we’ve successfully demonstrated how to print newlines in Bash. The newline character is denoted as “\n”. Using both the echo and printf commands, we can print strings with new lines in them. We can also cheat (well, technically) by running the same tool multiple times to get the desired result.

For more in-depth info about echo and printf, refer to their respective man pages.

Interested in Bash programming? Bash is a powerful scripting language that can perform wonders. Check out our Bash programming section. New to Bash programming? Get started with this simple and comprehensive guide on Bash scripting tutorials for beginners.

About the author

Sidratul Muntaha

Student of CSE. I love Linux and playing with tech and gadgets. I use both Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

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echo text with new line in bash

echo by default does leave a newline — do you need it to leave two? Also, if you’re running this on a linux system and opening the file on a windows or mac system, make sure your editor supports *nix newlines, or it’ll appear all on one line even though it’s on multiple lines.

3 Answers 3

% ( echo text ; echo "" ) >> file.conf 

% echo text >> file.conf % echo "" >> file.conf 

You can drop the empty argument ( echo «» => echo ). Also, option 4: echo $’text\n’ , which is useful for any command as the $» is interpreted by bash.

I think the proper answer should be that your command

does add an extra line, but after the new text, not before.

I guess that you want to add an extra line before that text, probably because your initial file doesn’t end in a new line. In that case you could use

instead, as the -e option allows you to use the new line \n character.

Just to add to akira’s response

use ctrl-v ctrl-m key combos twice to insert two newline control character in the terminal. Ctrl-v lets you insert control characters into the terminal. You could use the enter or return key instead of the ctrol-m if you like. It inserts the same thing.

This ends up looking like echo text^M^M >> file.conf

If you need linefeeds instead of carriage returns (linux/unix), try echo «text^J^J» >> file.conf Typing ^J might actually insert a literal newline, just make sure to put the quotes and it’ll be good.

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