UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Is there a way to get echo to make newlines without using any type of quotes? I've done a lot of searches and went into my Linux book to no avail. I'm trying to write five separate lines to a file. I can get echo to accept all five lines like this

echo \
\this is line 1\
\this is line 2\ > file

but once I do a cat on the file, it's just squashed together.

Thanks.

Why are you not using quotes?

do you have to use echo?

Here is an example using a "HERE" document.

cat > /tmp/file <<EOF
line 1
line 2
line 3
EOF

I can't use single or double quotes because thats one of the instructions in the assignment and I also have to use echo. I've googled and looked everywhere. I can get echo to accept all of the lines, but they aren't separated on each line.

Have you checked the manpage for your shell?

You can split lies with \n but that might require the use of quotes
echo line one \n line two > file

You can also try calling echo 5 times and appending the output.
echo line one > file
echo line two >> file

Yah, I didn't find anything useful for echo with man. It looks like I need quotes.

NAME
echo -- write arguments to the standard output

SYNOPSIS
echo [-n] [string ...]

DESCRIPTION
The echo utility writes any specified operands, separated by single blank
(` ') characters and followed by a newline (`\n') character, to the stan-
dard output.

The following option is available:

-n Do not print the trailing newline character. This may also be
achieved by appending `\c' to the end of the string, as is done by
iBCS2 compatible systems.

Some shells may provide a builtin echo command which is similar or iden-
tical to this utility. Consult the builtin(1) manual page.

Your idea works, but I need a way to do it all in one Enter. At least it's a backup if I can't...thanks.

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