How to insert a new line in Linux shell script? [d

Question

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• Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n 17 answers

I want to insert a new line between multiple echo statements. I have tried echo "hello\n", but it is not working. It is printing \n. I want the desired output like this:

Create the snapshots

Snapshot created

Answer 1

echo $'Create the snapshots\nSnapshot created\n'

Answer 2

Use this echo statement

 echo -e "Hai\nHello\nTesting\n"

The output is

Hai
Hello
Testing

Answer 3

You could use the printf(1) command, e.g. like

printf "Hello times %d\nHere\n" $[2+3] 

The  printf command may accept arguments and needs a format control string similar (but not exactly the same) to the one for the standard C printf(3) function...

Answer 4

The simplest way to insert a new line between echo statements is to insert an echo without arguments, for example:

echo Create the snapshots
echo
echo Snapshot created

That is, echo without any arguments will print a blank line.

Another alternative to use a single echo statement with the -e flag and embedded newline characters \n:

echo -e "Create the snapshots\n\nSnapshot created"

However, this is not portable, as the -e flag doesn't work consistently in all systems. A better way if you really want to do this is using printf:

printf "Create the snapshots\n\nSnapshot created\n"

This works more reliably in many systems, though it's not POSIX compliant. Notice that you must manually add a \n at the end, as printf doesn't append a newline automatically as echo does.