On Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:18:17 -0700, Bob Proulx wrote: >> So, I'm wondering what's the current solution to show/prompt messages >> with embedded \n? > > Use printf. What problems are you having with it? > > $ printf "Hello world!\n"
Thanks for your explanation, Bob. What I didn't make clear in the OP was that, I was actually looking for a general purpose command that can show whatever messages thrown to it, including the common backslash escapes. echo -e does a good job, but printf will choke on any of its control characters, e.g., %. Today, I just found that printf cannot be used to show whatever the command line is. Here is an example: set -- command -opt param params... echo='echo -e' $ $echo "\n> $@\n" > command -opt param params... So far so good. Now try printf: $ printf "\n> $@\n" > command What's happening? why printf chokes on '-'? BTW, the reason that I gave up 'echo -e' was that it started to mysteriously output that "-e " in front of the messages I wanted to show in my /bin/sh scripts. I still haven't figure out why yet. Thanks -- Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply) http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/ http://xpt.sourceforge.net/tools/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jd6839$urv$1...@dough.gmane.org
