echo
text
Print text.
Nonprinting characters can be included in text
using C escape sequences, such as ‘\n’
to print a newline.
Note:
No newline is printed unless
you specify one.
In addition to the standard
C escape sequences, a backslash followed by a space stands for a space.
This is useful for displaying a string with spaces at the beginning or
the end, since leading and trailing spaces are otherwise trimmed from all
arguments. To print ‘ and
foo = ’, use the
command ‘echo \ and
foo = \ ’. A backslash
at the end of text can be used, as in C, to continue the command onto subsequent
lines.
Consider the following example.
echo This is some text\n\
which is continued\n\
onto several lines.\n
The previous example shows
input that produces similar output as the following example.
echo This is some text\n
echo which is continued\n
echo onto several lines.\n
output
expression
Print the value of expression
and nothing but that value: no newlines, no ‘$
nn= ’.
The value is not entered in the value history either. See Expressions
for more information on expressions.
output/fmt
expression
Print the value of expression
in format,
fmt.
You can use the same formats as for print.
See Output formats
for more information.
printf string, expressions
...
Print the values of the
expressions
under the control of string.
The expressions are separated by commas and may be either numbers or pointers.
Their values are printed as specified by string,
exactly as if your program were to execute the C subroutine, as in the
following example.
printf (string,
expressions...);
For example, you can print
two values in hex like the following example shows.
printf "foo, bar-foo = 0x%x,
0x%x\n", foo, bar-foo
The only backslash-escape
sequences that you can use in the format string are the simple ones that
consist of backslash followed by a letter.