Jump to content United States-English
HP.com Home Products and Services Support and Drivers Solutions How to Buy
» Contact HP
More options
HP.com home
HP-UX Reference > E

echo(1)

HP-UX 11i Version 3: February 2007
» 

Technical documentation

» Feedback
Content starts here

 » Table of Contents

 » Index

NAME

echo — echo (print) arguments

SYNOPSIS

echo [arg] ...

DESCRIPTION

echo writes its arguments separated by blanks and terminated by a new-line on the standard output. It also understands C-like escape conventions; beware of conflicts with the shell's use of \:

\a

write an alert character

\b

backspace

\c

print line without appending a new-line

\f

form-feed

\n

new-line

\r

carriage return

\t

tab

\v

vertical tab

\\

backslash

\n

the 8-bit character whose ASCII code is the 1-, 2-, 3- or 4-digit octal number n, whose first character must be a zero.

\0num

write an 8-bit value that is the zero-, one-, two- or three-digit octal number num

echo is useful for producing diagnostics in command files and for sending known data into a pipe.

Notes

Berkeley echo differs from this implementation. The former does not implement the backslash escapes. However, the semantics of the \c escape can be obtained by using the -n option. The echo command implemented as a built-in function of csh follows the Berkeley semantics (see csh(1)).

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LC_CTYPE determines the interpretation of arg as single and/or multi-byte characters.

If LC_CTYPE is not specified in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of LANG is used as a default for each unspecified or empty variable. If LANG is not specified or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used instead of LANG. If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, echo behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to "C". See environ(5).

International Code Set Support

Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

AUTHOR

echo was developed by OSF and HP.

SEE ALSO

sh(1).

BUGS

No characters are printed after the first \c. This is not normally a problem.

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

echo: SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, POSIX.2

Printable version
Privacy statement Using this site means you accept its terms Feedback to webmaster
© 1983-2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.