By convention, when you print a prompt, you should leave the cursor at the end of the prompt and let the user's response provide the trailing newline character that will move the cursor to the next line.

On UNIX Systems, echo recognizes several backslash escapes including:
\a alert (screen flash or bell character or both)
\b backspace character
\f form feed character
\t tab character
\n newline character
\c stop looking for more text and skip trailing newline
and accepts no options. Any arguments starting with a - will be printed as is.

On BSD Systems, echo does not treat backslash as special, but has a -n option that will skip the trailing newline. Any other operands that look like options will be printed as is.

The standards allow either the BSD or the UNIX System behavior.

On Linux Systems, echo provides several options that are not allowed by the standards. Some of them recognize backslash escapes; some of them don't. Some of them skip the trailing newline; some don't.

Given the command:

Code:

echo -n -x -- "a\tb: \c"

A UNIX System (except OS X) will produce:

Code:

-n -x -- a	b: >>>Cursor here<<<

while a BSD System will produce:

Code:

-x -- a\tb: \c>>>Cursor here<<<

and a Linux System will do something different from either of the above.
A bug in OS X (which is supposed to be a UNIX System) prints the \t instead of replacing it with a tab.

As has been said many times in these forums before, if any of the operands to echo start with a minus sign or contain a backslash character, use printf instead of echo if you want to write a portable script.

PS The format operand to printf recognizes all of the normal C printf() backslash escapes. So, \n in the format string prints a newline.