shell scripting (special characters)

synapse · 02-18-2004, 06:00 AM

Hi

How do i go about passing a special character to a command.

Eg i have a file with a line of text within it called names.txt, If i send
#echo "this is a new line of text" >>names.txt

Then look into the file i will see

Johnthis is a new line of text

This appends to existing data in the file , I want to tell the redirector to insert a new line before appending so that the output becomes

John
this is a new line of text

Are there any special characters like \n or something that i can pass to do this.

Thanx

guygriffiths · 02-18-2004, 06:19 AM

This will work:

cat >> names.txt << EOF
this is a new line of text
as is this
so is this one
EOF

You could also use:

echo -e "\nthis is a new line of text" >> names.txt

The -e flag allows special characters to be used. Have a look at "man echo".
However, when I use the example you gave it inserts a newline character at the end anyway, and Linux text files normally end with a newline anyway, so if you build the file from scratch using echo commands it shouldn't be a problem.
Hope this helps
Guy

codeape · 02-18-2004, 06:21 AM

# echo -e "\nthis is a new line of text"

note: Echo will automatically insert a new-line at the *end* of the string so:

# touch names.txt
# echo Harry >>names.txt
# echo John >>names.txt
# echo Bill >>names.txt
#
# more names.txt
Harry
John
Bill

Check the manpages for 'echo' or 'printf' for more info.

codeape · 02-18-2004, 06:22 AM

Note to self: Type faster.

synapse · 02-18-2004, 07:05 AM

Thanx for the help

cheers