echo - Man Page
display a line of text
Examples (TL;DR)
- Print a text message. Note: quotes are optional:
echo "Hello World"
- Print a message with environment variables:
echo "My path is $PATH"
- Print a message without the trailing newline:
echo -n "Hello World"
- Append a message to the file:
echo "Hello World" >> file.txt
- Enable interpretation of backslash escapes (special characters):
echo -e "Column 1\tColumn 2"
- Print the exit status of the last executed command (Note: In Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell the equivalent commands are
echo %errorlevel%
and$lastexitcode
respectively):echo $?
Synopsis
echo [SHORT-OPTION]... [STRING]...
echo LONG-OPTION
Description
Echo the STRING(s) to standard output.
- -n
do not output the trailing newline
- -e
enable interpretation of backslash escapes
- -E
disable interpretation of backslash escapes (default)
- --help
display this help and exit
- --version
output version information and exit
If -e is in effect, the following sequences are recognized:
- \\
backslash
- \a
alert (BEL)
- \b
backspace
- \c
produce no further output
- \e
escape
- \f
form feed
- \n
new line
- \r
carriage return
- \t
horizontal tab
- \v
vertical tab
- \0NNN
byte with octal value NNN (1 to 3 digits)
- \xHH
byte with hexadecimal value HH (1 to 2 digits)
Your shell may have its own version of echo, which usually supersedes the version described here. Please refer to your shell's documentation for details about the options it supports.
Consider using the 'printf' command instead, as it avoids problems when outputting option-like strings.
Author
Written by Brian Fox and Chet Ramey.
Reporting Bugs
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
Copyright
Copyright © 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
See Also
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/echo>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) echo invocation'
Referenced By
badwolf(1), cpuset(7), dash(1), ebuild(5), foomatic-rip(1), ii(1), ksh93(1), ldapcompare(1), libarchive-formats(5), mksh(1), nawk(1), oksh(1), picocom(1), shtool(1), shtool-echo(1), s-nail(1), systemd-ask-password(1), systemd-run(1), tcsh(1), xmessage(1), zshoptions(1).