echo -n not working under cygwin

Question

I want to echo something to a file, for example:

aaaa
bbbb

man echo says:

-n     do not output the trailing newline

So I echo -n aaaa\r\nbbbb > somefile.txt

but the \r\n is output as text, not newline... The command above is ok under ubuntu12.04. I'm using win7 64bit, cygwin 1.7.16-1.

Answer 1

You need quotes and the -e option to enable interpretation of backslash escapes:

echo -en "aaaa\r\nbbbb" > somefile.txt

Tested in Cygwin, Does the job :)

Answer 2

Try this:

echo -n aaaa$'\r\n'bbbb > somefile.txt

That works under cygwin and ubuntu.

Edit:

or

echo -e 'aaaa\r\nbbbbb' > somefile.txt