I am writing a bash script, and I want to echo a string, but without a newline automatically added to the end. Reading the man page it says the flag is -n.
The problem is, when I do:
echo -n "My string is here" The output in the bash script is:
-n My string is here Any idea why the -n flag is being outputted instead of processed.
Check the shell you are using with:
echo $0 If it is /bin/sh, change to /bin/bash with chsh and try again.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071106192548833
#!/bin/sh). Works on CentOS, but appears that OSX does not like the -n flag.
echo -n successfully. #!/bin/bash) or some other shell that definitely supports the option then echo -n. On some systems the shell that /bin/sh represents is Bash or similar, but it could be something very simple that only implements the minimum functionality required to be POSIX compliant (and this doesn't include the -n option for echo). -n just fine, but 10.5.0 doesn't. echo is weirdly inconsistent between versions -- different versions of /bin/echo, as well as the builtin versions in various shells (even different versions of the same shell). Some versions understand options (like -n), some versions understand escape sequences within the string (end with "\c" to skip the newline). Some versions use a weird mix of the two.
If you want consistent behavior, avoid echo and use printf instead. It's a little more complicated, but it's much more predictable:
printf "%s" "My string is here" 