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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Echo displays strange output when '?' is used Post 303046005 by bedtime on Tuesday 21st of April 2020 01:23:13 PM
Old 04-21-2020
Echo displays strange output when '?' is used

In bash or sh terminal I get this strange response when using echo.


It's really best just to give you the code:

Code:
user@localhost:~$ text="?"; echo $text
P T V
user@localhost:~$ text='?'; echo $text
P T V
user@localhost:~$ text='?'; printf "$text\n"
?

So, printf works nicely but is there a way to get printf to take the escape sequences of variables?


I think it might have happened after messing around with Gnome-Shell extensions but not sure.


Any idea why it's happening or how to get rid of it?
 

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SHTOOL-ECHO.TMP(1)					      GNU Portable Shell Tool						SHTOOL-ECHO.TMP(1)

NAME
shtool-echo - GNU shtool echo(1) extensional command SYNOPSIS
shtool echo [-n|--newline] [-e|--expand] string DESCRIPTION
shtool echo is an echo(1) style command which prints string to stdout and optionally provides special expansion constructs (terminal bold mode, environment details, date, etc) and newline control. The trick of this command is that it provides a portable -n option and hides the gory details needed to find out the environment details under option -e. OPTIONS
The following command line options are available. -n, --newline By default, output is written to stdout followed by a "newline" (ASCII character 0x0a). If option -n is used, this newline character is omitted. -e, --expand If option -e is used, string can contain special "%x" constructs which are expanded before the output is written. Currently the following constructs are recognized: %B switch terminal mode to bold display mode. %b switch terminal mode back to normal display mode. %u the current user name. %U the current user id (numerical). %g the current group name. %G the current group id (numerical). %h the current hostname (without any domain extension). %d the current domain name. %D the current day of the month. %M the current month (numerical). %m the current month name. %Y the current year. EXAMPLE
# shell script shtool echo -n -e "Enter your name [%B%u%b]: "; read name shtool echo -e "Your Email address might be %u@%h%d" shtool echo -e "The current date is %D-%m-%Y" HISTORY
The GNU shtool echo command was originally written by Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com> in 1998 for Website META Language (WML) under the name buildinfo. It was later taken over into GNU shtool. SEE ALSO
shtool(1), echo(1). 18-Jul-2008 shtool 2.0.8 SHTOOL-ECHO.TMP(1)
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