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Echo : -n vs \c
As you may have noticed by now, when you use the echo statement, a newline is added at the end of the
command. There is a fix for this ... well, more accurately, there are two fixes for this.
echo -n message to tell echo not to append a newline; others use
echo message \c to do the same thing:
echo -n "Enter your name: " read name echo "Hello, $name"This will work on some systems, and will look like this:
Enter your name: Steve
Hello, Steve
However, on other systems, you need to write the code like this:
echo "Enter your name: \c" read name echo "Hello, $name"Which will provide the same results for those systems.
Well, that's a pain. Here's a workaround which will work on both:
if [ "`echo -n`" = "-n" ]; then
n=""
c="\c"
else
n="-n"
c=""
fi
echo $n Enter your name: $c
read name
echo "Hello, $name"
If echo -n wasn't interpreted properly, it would just echo out the text -n, in which case,
$n is set to the empty string, and $c is set to \c. Otherwise, the opposite
is done, so $n is set to -n, and $c is set to the empty string.
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Steve's Bourne / Bash shell scripting tutorial
