sh -c and newline

Brian Inglis Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca
Mon Dec 5 20:03:00 GMT 2016


On 2016-12-05 12:38, Gluszczak, Glenn wrote:
> I can't seem to get sh -c to recognize newline. Tcsh -c works.
> I'm using echo as an example but I'm actually trying to build a
> here-document.
> %%%sh -c  "echo \nhello"
> nhello
> %%%sh -c  "echo \\nhello"
> nhello
> %%%sh -c  "echo \\\nhello"
> \nhello
> %%%tcsh -c  "echo \nhello"
> nhello
> %%%tcsh -c  "echo \\nhello"
> \nhello
> %%%tcsh -c "echo \\\nhello"
> hello

Your login shell is scanning and interpreting escapes in the input, 
then the subshell you are running, so you need to quote \n to let 
echo see it. Builtin echo does not recognize escapes without -e.
You can use echo -e, or $ prefix a single quoted string to have the 
shell interpret the escape sequence.

$ sh -c "echo -e '\nhello'"

hello
$ sh -c "echo $'\n'hello"

hello
$ sh -c "echo $'\nhello'"

hello

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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