[bash] Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n

In Bash, tried this:

echo -e "hello\nworld"

But it doesn't print a newline, only \n. How can I make it print the newline?

I'm using Ubuntu 11.04.

It works for me in CentOS:

echo -e ""hello\nworld""

My script:

echo "WARNINGS: $warningsFound WARNINGS FOUND:\n$warningStrings

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. Output now is:

WARNING : 2 WARNINGS FOUND:
Warning, found the following local orphaned signature file:

Try

echo -e "hello\nworld"
hello
world

worked for me in nano editor.

From the man page:

-e enable interpretation of backslash escapes

You can also do:

echo "hello
world"

This works both inside a script and from the command line.
In the command line, press Shift+Enter to do the line breaks inside the string.

This works for me on my macOS and my Ubuntu 18.04

Additional solution :

In cases, You have to echo 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 need to invoke another program (tr) which should be fine IMO.

str='hello\nworld'
$ echo | sed "i$str"
hello
world

You could always do echo "".

e.g.

echo "Hello"
echo ""
echo "World"

POSIX 7 on echo

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.

You could also use echo with braces,

$ (echo hello; echo world)
hello
world

One more entry here for those that didn't make it work with any of these solutions, and 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 in a linux I was working on with this bash:

GNU bash, version 2.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)

Hope it helps someone with similar problem.

echo $'hello\nworld'

prints

hello
world

$'' strings use ANSI C Quoting:

Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.

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$newlinesecond line"
echo "Error: example error message n${newline}${usage}" >&2 #requires usage to be defined

Are you sure you are in bash? Works for me, all four ways:

echo -e "Hello\nworld"
echo -e 'Hello\nworld'
echo Hello$'\n'world
echo Hello ; echo world

Simply type

echo

to get a new line

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

In 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;

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"`

I just use echo no arguments

echo "Hello"
echo
echo "World"

This could better be done as

x="\n"
echo -ne $x

-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)

This works for me in Raspbian,

echo -e "hello\\nworld"

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]