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echo

Display a line of text

command Shell UtilitiesScriptingText Processing

Overview

Displays a line of text or string that is passed as an argument. It is commonly used in shell scripts and batch files to output status text to the screen or a file, and for variable expansion.

Syntax

echo [SHORT-OPTION]... [STRING]...

Common Options

-n

Do not output the trailing newline character.

-e

Enable interpretation of backslash escapes (behavior can vary between shell built-in and coreutils echo).

-E

Explicitly disable interpretation of backslash escapes (often default).

Backslash Escapes (with -e)

Common escapes: \ (backslash), a (alert),  (backspace), c (suppress further output), e (escape char), (form feed), (new line), (carriage return), (horizontal tab), (vertical tab), \0NNN (octal byte e.g. \077), \xHH (hex byte e.g. \x3F).

Examples

$ echo "Hello, World!"

Displays "Hello, World!" followed by a newline.

$ echo -n "No newline"

Displays "No newline" without a trailing newline.

$ echo -e "Line 1 Line 2 Indented"

Displays text on two lines with the second line indented (if -e is supported and interpreted).

$ name="User"; echo "Welcome, $name!"

Displays "Welcome, User!" by expanding the shell variable.

$ echo "Saving data..." > log.txt

Writes the string "Saving data..." to the file `log.txt`, overwriting existing content.

$ echo "Error encountered." >> error_log.txt

Appends the string "Error encountered." to `error_log.txt`.

$ echo "An important message" >&2

Redirects the message to standard error (stderr).

$ echo -e "This is red text"

Displays "This is red text" in red color using ANSI escape codes (terminal dependent).

Related Commands

grep

Print lines matching a pattern

less

Opposite of more; view file content paginated

head

Output the first part of files

tail

Output the last part of files

awk

Pattern scanning and processing language

sed

Stream editor for filtering and transforming text

echoprintdisplayoutputtextstringshellscript