misbehaving 'echo' command on Cygwin

Fulliautomatix · 01-10-2015, 09:53 AM

Hi,

I've used unix before, but have just started to play with CYGWIN (1.1.3) on windows XP (32 bit). I'm having trouble getting 'echo' to behave as I would expect.

I've created a script called runstuff which contains these lines....

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# This line works as expected....
echo "the user is <$USER> and the hostname is <$HOSTNAME>"
MYVAR1=bill
MYVAR2=fred
# This lines doesn't.....
echo "my first variable is<$MYVAR1> and my second is <$MYVAR2>"

The output I get is this...

Quote:

$ runstuff
the user is <Mike> and the hostname is <MikesLaptop>
> and my second is <fredl

In the first echo statement it is just echoing a couple of external variables - this works as expected. In the 2nd echo example the two variables are internal, but the displayed output isn't what I'd expect, my guess is that the first part of the output "my first variable is <bill" has somehow been overwritten by the remainder of the string. Or am I missing something?

I have tried exporting the variables, and I've experimented with wrapping them in quotes, but the results are always the same.

Any help gratefully received.

veerain · 01-10-2015, 11:24 AM

Try enclosing variables in parentheses "{}". Like

Code:

echo "${MYVAR1} and ${MYVAR2}"

Fulliautomatix · 01-10-2015, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Try enclosing variables in parentheses "{}". Like

Thanks, but I tried that - makes no difference at all.

I'm pretty sure that what I'm doing is good on most normal Unix installations, my guess is this is a limitation or 'feature' of cygwin

Fulliautomatix · 01-12-2015, 07:03 AM

Ok, finally got it now. The text editor I was using (EditPlus) was set to 'dos' mode, so each line was terminated with a "\n" and "\r". As soon as I changed it to 'unix' mode, the line terminator was changed to "\n" only.

The file then started behaving itself!

Thanks