UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi friends,

I am trying to execute some of our scripts and apparently I had this error message:

Code:

bash: print: command not found

Every other scripts runs smoothly excepts this that uses the print command. I search the /bin and it was not there. I also tried to search in the whole folder structure and the binary is no where to be found. Is there a way to download just a single binary to have it available in my box once ftp-ed? Thanks!

"print" is a KSH-only thing. It's not on BASH because BASH is not KSH. Use 'echo', which truly is everywhere, in binary and builtin forms.

Or printf, with its more advanced features.

Or if you don't feel like modifying your scripts that much, you could make a function at the top to replace ksh's print:

Code:

function print
{
        echo -- "$@"
}

Sorry for my ignorance... previously I was using AIX and I can use print as a command inside any random script... and now I am on Linux, which uses Bash, and print will not work in this environment. is that correct?

I take it in AIX, "any random script" gets you KSH? Of all the shells I've tested(ksh, ash, dash, bash, zsh, csh), only ksh and zsh have 'print'. Your scripts really are incompatible with ordinary bourne shells.

Even Bourne Shell doesn't have "print".
Beware if you set forth trying to convert "print" to "printf" you need to specify the line terminator character.

Code:

# ksh
print "Hello world"
# posix
printf "Hello world\n"

Personally I prefer "echo" but the Posix police prefer "printf".


Just for interest, there is no "printf" in "ksh". Where present it is implemented as /usr/bin/printf .

printf has a lot more functionality, is the thing, implemented in a much more portable way. echo can be a bit of a mess. Some echo changes echo "a\nb" into a newline, some don't. Sometimes you need echo -e to do that, sometimes you don't.

But printf is nearly the same everywhere -- far less ambiguous.