[windows] How can I echo a newline in a batch file?

How can you you insert a newline from your batch file output?

I want to do something like:

echo hello\nworld

Which would output:

hello
world

If one needs to use famous \n in string literals that can be passed to a variable, may write a code like in the Hello.bat script below:

@echo off
set input=%1
if defined input (
    set answer=Hi!\nWhy did you call me a %input%?
) else (
    set answer=Hi!\nHow are you?\nWe are friends, you know?\nYou can call me by name.
)

setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set newline=^


rem Two empty lines above are essential
echo %answer:\n=!newline!%

This way multiline output may by prepared in one place, even in other scritpt or external file, and printed in another.

The line break is held in newline variable. Its value must be substituted after the echo line is expanded so I use setlocal enableDelayedExpansion to enable exclamation signs which expand variables on execution. And the execution substitutes \n with newline contents (look for syntax at help set). We could of course use !newline! while setting the answer but \n is more convenient. It may be passed from outside (try Hello R2\nD2), where nobody knows the name of variable holding the line break (Yes, Hello C3!newline!P0 works the same way).

Above example may be refined to a subroutine or standalone batch, used like call:mlecho Hi\nI'm your comuter:

:mlecho
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set text=%*
set nl=^


echo %text:\n=!nl!%
goto:eof

Please note, that additional backslash won't prevent the script from parsing \n substring.

You can also do like this,

(for %i in (a b "c d") do @echo %~i)

The output will be,

a
b
c d

Note that when this is put in a batch file, '%' shall be doubled.

(for %%i in (a b "c d") do @echo %%~i)

Here you go, create a .bat file with the following in it :

@echo off
REM Creating a Newline variable (the two blank lines are required!)
set NLM=^


set NL=^^^%NLM%%NLM%^%NLM%%NLM%
REM Example Usage:
echo There should be a newline%NL%inserted here.

echo.
pause

You should see output like the following:

There should be a newline
inserted here.

Press any key to continue . . .

You only need the code between the REM statements, obviously.

Use:

echo hello
echo.
echo world

You can use @echo ( @echo + [space] + [insecable space] )

Note: The insecable space can be obtained with Alt+0160

Hope it helps :)

[edit] Hmm you're right, I needed it in a Makefile, it works perfectly in there. I guess my answer is not adapted for batch files... My bad.

This solution works(Tested):

type nul | more /e /p

This converts isolated line feeds to carriage return line feed combination.

If you need to put results to a file, you can use

(echo a & echo. & echo b) > file_containing_multiple_lines.txt

Just like Grimtron suggests - here is a quick example to define it:

@echo off
set newline=^& echo.
echo hello %newline%world

Output

C:\>test.bat
hello
world

To start a new line in batch, all you have to do is add "echo[", like so:

echo Hi!
echo[
echo Hello!

why not use substring/replace space to echo;?

set "_line=hello world"
echo\%_line: =&echo;%

• Results:

hello
world

• Or, replace \n to echo;

set "_line=hello\nworld"
echo\%_line:\n=&echo;%

If anybody comes here because they are looking to echo a blank line from a MINGW make makefile, I used

@cmd /c echo.

simply using echo. causes the dreaded process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, echo., ...) failed. error message.

I hope this helps at least one other person out there :)

Like the answer of Ken, but with the use of the delayed expansion.

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
(set \n=^
%=Do not remove this line=%
)

echo Line1!\n!Line2
echo Works also with quotes "!\n!line2"

First a single linefeed character is created and assigned to the \n-variable.
This works as the caret at the line end tries to escape the next character, but if this is a Linefeed it is ignored and the next character is read and escaped (even if this is also a linefeed).
Then you need a third linefeed to end the current instruction, else the third line would be appended to the LF-variable.
Even batch files have line endings with CR/LF only the LF are important, as the CR's are removed in this phase of the parser.

The advantage of using the delayed expansion is, that there is no special character handling at all.
echo Line1%LF%Line2 would fail, as the parser stops parsing at single linefeeds.

More explanations are at
SO:Long commands split over multiple lines in Vista/DOS batch (.bat) file
SO:How does the Windows Command Interpreter (CMD.EXE) parse scripts?

Edit: Avoid echo.

This doesn't answer the question, as the question was about single echo that can output multiple lines.

But despite the other answers who suggests the use of echo. to create a new line, it should be noted that echo. is the worst, as it's very slow and it can completly fail, as cmd.exe searches for a file named ECHO and try to start it.

For printing just an empty line, you could use one of

echo,
echo;
echo(
echo/
echo+
echo=

But the use of echo., echo\ or echo: should be avoided, as they can be really slow, depending of the location where the script will be executed, like a network drive.

This worked for me, no delayed expansion necessary:

@echo off
(
echo ^<html^> 
echo ^<body^>
echo Hello
echo ^</body^>
echo ^</html^>
)
pause

It writes output like this:

<html>
<body>
Hello
</body>
</html>
Press any key to continue . . .

echo. Enough said.

If you need it in a single line, use the &. For example,

echo Line 1 & echo. & echo line 3

would output as:

Line 1

line 3

Now, say you want something a bit fancier, ...

set n=^&echo.
echo hello %n% world

Outputs

hello
world

Then just throw in a %n% whenever you want a new line in an echo statement. This is more close to your \n used in various languages.

Breakdown

set n= sets the variable n equal to:

^ Nulls out the next symbol to follow:

& Means to do another command on the same line. We don't care about errorlevel(its an echo statement for crying out loud), so no && is needed.

echo. Continues the echo statement.

All of this works because you can actually create variables that are code, and use them inside of other commands. It is sort of like a ghetto function, since batch is not exactly the most advanced of shell scripting languages. This only works because batch's poor usage of variables, not designating between ints, chars, floats, strings, etc naturally.

If you are crafty, you could get this to work with other things. For example, using it to echo a tab

set t=^&echo.     ::there are spaces up to the double colon

Ken and Jeb solutions works well.

But the new lines are generated with only an LF character and I need CRLF characters (Windows version).

To this, at the end of the script, I have converted LF to CRLF.

Example:

TYPE file.txt | FIND "" /V > file_win.txt
del file.txt
rename file_win.txt file.txt

Here you go, create a .bat file with the following in it :

@echo off
REM Creating a Newline variable (the two blank lines are required!)
set NLM=^


set NL=^^^%NLM%%NLM%^%NLM%%NLM%
REM Example Usage:
echo There should be a newline%NL%inserted here.

echo.
pause

You should see output like the following:

There should be a newline
inserted here.

Press any key to continue . . .

You only need the code between the REM statements, obviously.

When echoing something to redirect to a file, multiple echo commands will not work. I think maybe the ">>" redirector is a good choice:

echo hello > temp
echo world >> temp

There is a standard feature echo: in cmd/bat-files to write blank line, which emulates a new line in your cmd-output:

@echo off
@echo line1
@echo:
@echo line2

Output of cited above cmd-file:

line1

line2