echo -n prints -n

Question

I have a problem with echo in my script   echo -n  Some string       prints  -n Some string      and moves to the next line  In the console it s working correcly without newline   Some string

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enable -n echo echo -n  Some string

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When you go and write you shell script always put first line as    usr bin env bash   This shell doesn t omit or manipulate escape sequences   ex echo  This is first  n line  prints This is first  n line

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I believe right now your output printing as below    echo -e  String1 nString2  String1 String2   You can use xargs to get multiline stdout into same line      echo -e  String1 nString2    xargs String1 String2

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Just for the most popular linux Ubuntu  amp  it s bash   Check which shell are you using  Mostly below works  else see this  echo  0  If above prints bash  then below will work  printf  quot hello with no new line printed at end quot  OR echo -n  quot hello with no new line printed at end quot

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To achieve this there are basically two methods which I frequently use   1  Using the cursor escape character   c   with echo -e  Example     for i in  0  10  2   do   echo -e   i  c                done   0 2 4 6 8 10    -e flag enables the Escape characters in the string     c brings the Cursor back to the current line    OR  2  Using the printf command  Example   for   i   0  i  lt  5    i    do   printf   i   done   0 1 2 3 4

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Try with   echo -e  Some string    c    It works for me as expected  as I understood from your question     Note that I got this information from the man page  The man page also notes the shell may have its own version of echo  and I am not sure if bash has its own version

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bash has a  built-in  command called  echo      type echo echo is a shell builtin   Additionally  there is an  echo  command that is a proper executable  that is  the shell forks and execs  bin echo  as opposed to interpreting echo and executing it      ls -l  bin echo -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22856 Jul 21  2011  bin echo   The behavior of either echo s WRT to  c and -n varies   Your best bet is to use printf  which is available on four different  NIX flavors that I looked at     printf  a line without trailing linefeed    printf  a line with trailing linefeed n

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There are multiple versions of the echo command  with different behaviors  Apparently the shell used for your script uses a version that doesn t recognize -n   The printf command has much more consistent behavior  echo is fine for simple things like echo hello  but I suggest using printf for anything more complicated   What system are you on  and what shell does your script use

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If you use echo inside an if with other commands  like  read   it might ignore the setting and it will jump to a new line anyway

[sh] "echo -n" prints "-n"

Examples related to sh