ECHO(1) BSD General Commands Manual ECHO(1)

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 standard 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. Note that this option as well as the effect of ‘\c’ are implementation-defined in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (‘‘POSIX.1’’) as amended by Cor. 1-2002. Applications aiming for maximum portability are strongly encouraged to use printf(1) to suppress the newline character.

Some shells may provide a builtin echo command which is similar or identical to this utility. Most notably, the builtin echo in sh(1) does not accept the −n option. Consult the builtin(1) manual page.

EXIT STATUS

The echo utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

builtin(1), csh(1), printf(1), sh(1)

STANDARDS

The echo utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (‘‘POSIX.1’’) as amended by Cor. 1-2002.

BSD April 12, 2003 BSD