Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

Name

echo — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

echo [options] strings

The echo command simply prints its arguments:

➜ echo We are having fun
We are having fun

OS X has several different echo commands with slightly different behavior. There’s /bin/echo, but shells typically override this with a built-in command called echo. To find out which you’re using, run the command type echo.

Useful options

-n	Don’t print a final newline character.
-e	Recognize and interpret escape characters. (Not supported by /bin/echo.) For example, try echo 'hello\a' and echo -e 'hello\a'. The first prints literally and the second makes a beep.
-E	Don’t interpret escape characters: the opposite of -e. (Not supported by /bin/echo.)

Available escape characters are:

\a	Alert (play a beep)
\b	Backspace
\c	Don’t print the final newline (same effect as -n)
\f	Form feed
\n	Line feed (newline)
\r	Carriage return
\t	Horizontal tab
\v	Vertical tab
\\	A backslash
\'	Single quote
\"	Double quote
\nnn	The character whose ASCII value is nnn in octal