CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellsolaris
user3782337
user3782337

Reputation: 1

Unix-Echo -n is not working

for(( i=0;i<=5;i++))
do
    for ((j=1;j<=i;j++))
    do
        echo -n "$j"
    done 
    echo " "
done

Outputs:

-n 1

-n 1
-n 2

-n 1
-n 2
-n 3

-n 1
-n 2
-n 3
-n 4

-n 1
-n 2
-n 3
-n 4
-n 5

My OS: SunOS sun4v sparc sun4v

I want the output to be:

1
1 2
1 2 3
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 5

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1721

Answers (2)

iamharish15
iamharish15

Reputation: 1850

If -n option is not working for you, you can try using -e option which enables the use of backslash characters and then you can use \c in your echo statement. Here is the code sample:

    for(( i=0;i<=5;i++))
    do
        for ((j=1;j<=i;j++))
           do
               echo -e "$j \c"
          done
        echo " "
   done

Upvotes: 0

user4815162342
user4815162342

Reputation: 155216

According to the manual, the -n option to echo is not portable. On a Solaris system -n is supported by the BSD emulation of echo in /usr/ucb/echo, but not by the default echo. As a result:

ksh88's and ksh's echo does not have an -n option. csh's echo and /usr/ucb/echo, on the other hand, have an -n option, but do not understand the back-slashed escape characters. sh and ksh88 determine whether /usr/ucb/echo is found first in the PATH and, if so, they adapt the behavior of the echo builtin to match /usr/ucb/echo.

To fix the problem, you have several options:

  1. Switch to printf %s "$j" to portably print a string without newline. (I would recommend doing this.)

  2. Switch to \c escapes, i.e. replace echo -n "$j" with echo "$j\c". (Not recommended if the script needs to remain portable to BSD systems.)

  3. Download a well-tested free shell such as bash that implements echo -n, and use it to run the shell scripts you care about.

  4. Prepend /usr/ucb to the PATH. This will cause echo to switch to BSD-compliant behavior, but will also introduce other BSD commands, potentially breaking unrelated parts of the script. (Not recommended.)

Upvotes: 7

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