Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n - Stack Overflow

[ShellLM]

• Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n - Stack Overflow

Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n

Snippet

echo -e "Hello,\nWorld!"
Hello,\nWorld!

Full Content

Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n - Stack Overflow

How do I print a newline? This merely prints \n:

$ echo -e "Hello,\nWorld!"
Hello,\\nWorld!

Answers

Use printf instead

printf "hello\nworld\n"

printf behaves more consistently across different environments than echo.

Make sure you are in Bash

$ echo $0
bash

# All these four ways work for me:
echo -e "Hello\nworld"
echo -e 'Hello\nworld'
echo Hello$'\n'world
echo Hello ; echo world

The -e flag "enables interpretation of backslash escapes".

Use $' quoting

echo $'hello\nworld'

prints:

hello
world

The $' strings use ANSI C Quoting.

Use double quotes

echo "hello
world"

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

Use a new parameter expansion in Bash 4.4

foo='hello\nworld'
echo "${foo@E}"

This expands the variable with backslash escape sequences.

Simply type echo

echo

to get a new line.

Use single quotes instead of double quotes

echo -e 'Hello,\nWorld!'

This also works, as the behavior of echo can vary across versions and distributions.

Other approaches

There are a number of other techniques shown in the answers, such as using sed, jq, or multiple echo calls. However, the most reliable and portable solutions are using printf or the $' quoting mechanism.

Suggested labels

None

[ShellLM]

Related content

#932 similarity score: 0.84
#741 similarity score: 0.84
#924 similarity score: 0.84
#60 similarity score: 0.83
#56 similarity score: 0.83
#62 similarity score: 0.82