ECHO(1) BSD General Commands Manual ECHO(1)NAMEecho — write arguments to the standard output
SYNOPSISecho [-n] [string ...]
DESCRIPTION
The echo utility writes any specified operands, separated by single blank
(‘ ’) characters and followed by a newline (‘\n’) character, to the stan‐
dard output.
The following option is available:
-n Do not print the trailing newline character.
The end-of-options marker -- is not recognized and written literally.
The newline may also be suppressed by appending ‘\c’ to the end of the
string, as is done by iBCS2 compatible systems. Note that the -n 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. For portability, echo
should only be used if the first argument does not start with a hyphen
(‘-’) and does not contain any backslashes (‘\’). If this is not suffi‐
cient, printf(1) should be used.
Most shells provide a builtin echo command which tends to differ from
this utility in the treatment of options and backslashes. Consult the
builtin(1) manual page.
EXIT STATUS
The echo utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSObuiltin(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 November 12, 2010 BSD