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echo (display text)

Displays the text or variables specified.

Format:    echo textstring
Examples:  echo Hello World
           echo $HOME

The first example displays Hello World on the screen. The second example displays the contents of the variable HOME. $ indicates that HOME is a variable. HOME contains the path to your home directory, so the second example displays the path to your home directory on the screen.

You can use some special characters with the echo command to format the output, shown in the first table below. The second table shows the most useful options for echo.

Char	What It Does	Example
\a	Alert (rings bell)	echo \aerror
\b	Backspace	echo \bHello
\c	Suppress new line	echo $text_line\c
\f	Form feed	echo Hello World\f
\n	Start a new line	echo Hello \nWorld ...