Login or Register to Ask a Question and Join Our Community


Shell Programming and Scripting

Escape chars not working

Login to Discuss or Reply to this Discussion in Our Community

 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Escape chars not working
# 1  
Old 07-03-2014
Escape chars not working
Hi, i'm working on Linux 2.6.9-55.EL #1 version. Unable to use escape chars like \n, \t, etc. They don't work whn embedded in shell script. Pls help.
shell script:
Code:
echo "Hello $USER"
echo "Today is \n ";date

output:
Code:
Hello linux1
Today is \n
Thu Jul  3 12:01:31 IST 2014

# 2  
Old 07-03-2014
The way echo treats strings containing backslash escapes and options starting with a minus signs varies from system to system and shell to shell. To get portable behavior, use printf instead of echo for any strings that contain backslash escapes:
Code:
printf "Hello %s\nToday is " "$USER";date

which produces:
Code:
Hello linux1
Today is Thu Jul  3 00:02:09 PDT 2014

# 3  
Old 07-03-2014
On linux, echo -e might work:
Code:
echo -e "Today is \n ";date
Today is 
 
03.07.14 10:48

Read man page!
Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Shell script to split data with a delimiter having chars and special chars

Hi Team, I have a file a1.txt with data as follows. dfjakjf...asdfkasj</EnableQuotedIDs><SQL><SelectStatement modified='1' type='string'><! The delimiter string: <SelectStatement modified='1' type='string'><! dlm="<SelectStatement modified='1' type='string'><! The above command is... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: kmanivan82
7 Replies

2. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

How to escape % with sed?

Hello, I am running ubuntu 16.04 I searched "how to replace dot by % using sed" but no luck. file My.Name.Is.Earl Expected output My%Name%Is%Earl I tried: sed -i "s|.||g" file sed -i "s|.|{%}|g" file sed -i "s|.|\%|g" file I'd appreciate your help Thank you Boris (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: baris35
6 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Auto escape script to escape special chars in script args

This is a bit off the wall, but I often need to run scripts where there are argument values that contain special characters. For example, $ ./process.exe -t M -N -o temp.mol.s -i ../molfiles/N,N\',N\'\'-trimethylbis\(hexamethylene\)triamine.mol && sfile_space_to_tab.sh temp.mol.s temp.s It... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: LMHmedchem
1 Replies

4. Solaris

Escape Sequence for Capital Letters Input at Shell Not Working

Hello, I am running Solaris 8. When issuing the command "stty lcase" all text which is output to the terminal are capitalized. Letters that are supposed to be capitals are preceded by a backslash during output. All text which is input is converted to lower case. This is the expected behaviour... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: rstor
5 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

escape character not working

I need to change a pattern with single quotes # echo "serversignature: 'On'" serversignature: 'On' I did # echo "serversignature: 'On'" | sed 's/.*serversignature.*/serversignature: 'Off'/' serversignature: Off The output I need is with single quotes. But its swallowing it. ... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: anilcliff
2 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Escape ' in awk

I am trying to escape single quote in awk, but could not: awk ' BEGIN{ fstr="COMPRESS('Y','N')" } { substr($1,len-3,4)~/_IND/ len=length($1) if(substr($1,len-3,4)~/_IND/) printf("%-32s%-14s%-5s%-14s\n",$1,$2,$3,$fstr,$4,$5,$6,$7) } ' tt.txt > out.log Error: awk: Field... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: ysvsr1
8 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

find 4 chars on 2nd line, 44 chars over

I know this should be simple, but I've been manning sed awk grep and find and am stupidly stumped :( I'm trying to use sed (or awk, find, etc) to find 4 characters on the second line of a file.txt 44-47 characters in. I can find lots of sed things for lines, but not characters. (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: unclecameron
4 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to convert C source from 8bit chars to 16bit chars?

I was using the following bash command inside the emacs compile command to search C++ source code: grep -inr --include='*.h' --include='*.cpp' '"' * | sed "/include/d" | sed "/_T/d" | sed '/^ *\/\//d' | sed '/extern/d' Emacs will then position me in the correct file and at the correct line... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: siegfried
0 Replies

9. Solaris

Available escape sequences

:) Hi, Can any one help me to find available escape sequences in UNIX shell programming? ( Like \n, \c etc,. in C or C++) Iam generating one report using one of the script, in that it is very much essential. Regards, LOVE (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: Love
6 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Escape character in vi?

I want to replace a string which contains "/" in vi but what is the escape character for forward slash? e.g. I have a text file with the contents below and I want to replace "/Top/Sub/Sub1" with "ABC". /Top/Sub/Sub1 The replace command I am using is ... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: stevefox
4 Replies
Login or Register to Ask a Question