Shell Programming and Scripting

echo -e "u\tvalue\tothervalue"

works under bsd echo, i think.

got it. thanks.

Code:

#----------------------------------------------#
#Main program. Exit at 'q'   #
#----------------------------------------------#

bold=`tput smso`
norm=`tput rmso`

keyStroke=""
while [ "$keyStroke" != "q" ]
do
   if [ "$keyStroke" = "u" ]
   then
        printf "${bold}User:${norm} \c"
        read user
        clear

I'm not sure why [printf "${bold}User:${norm} \c"] display the 'c' character as well. Running on Linux box. tcsh shell (do i need to include in the script as #!/bin/tcsh or #!/bin/sh ?)

Thanks.
ps. the 'c' character do not print out when i did the command line outside of the script.

try:

Code:

printf '%s' "${bold}User:${norm} "

thanks for your suggestion, but it doesn't work. still printing '\c'

I see you are using Linux. I tried this on my Linux box and got the same result. According to Posix: This means that the two commands:
printf "hello: "
printf "hello: \c"
should be absolutely identical in operation. They are on Solaris. Neither HP-UX nor Linux got it right. However, appending a superfluous \c on the end of the format is silly. Simply remove the \c and be happy. printf is not echo. printf will not append a newline unless explicitly instructed to do so.

I was not aware of this, thank you so much for pointing that out!
and you're right about HP-UX doing the same thing as Linux, I tried that too before asking the question.

Cheers!