CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellfish
Adam
Adam

Reputation: 1744

Is there a way to echo/cat a multiline message in Fish shell?

In Bash/Zsh, it is Okay using cat for a multiline message, eg:

cat <<DELIM
This is line 1
This is line 2
DELIM

However, the above code does not work for Fish Shell. Is there a way of doing so?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 3574

Answers (2)

faho
faho

Reputation: 15934

Fish doesn't have "Here documents".

The easiest way to do this is probably to use printf, e.g.:

printf "%s\n" "This is line 1" "This is line 2"

Or you can take advantage of the fact that fish scans for matching quotes across multiple lines:

echo "This is line 1
This is line 2"

If you wish to have the ending quote on the next line to ease inserting more lines, you can use echo -n:

echo -n "This is line 1
This is line 2
"

Upvotes: 12

MindTooth
MindTooth

Reputation: 5148

This is what I ended up using for my block of text. Read the tip about printf from faho. But wanted the code to be looking like the block itself. 

printf "\t%s\n"              \
       "###################" \
       "#                 #" \
       "# Multiline block #" \
       "#                 #" \
       "###################"

%s: Is the strings encapsulated in double quotes.

\n: New line.

\t: Horizontal tab.

Mixing it together inserts a tab before each line, indenting the text. And it adds a carriage return at the end of each line.

Upvotes: 8

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