wrapping long bash commands in script files

Question

How do you wrap a long command to the next line within a bash script file?

As a simple example, I want to run the command "pushd . && cd /foo/bar && ls && popd"

From the console I can do this:

pushd . \
&& cd /foo/bar \
&& ls \
&& popd

And that wraps the line.

But the same code in a script file produces an error.

How do you wrap these lines to be nicely formatted?

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Answer 1 · 2011-01-24 10:47:29Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Works fine here. Make sure that the backslash is the very last character on the line, and that the file uses *nix line endings.

answered Jan 24 '11 at 10:47

	Works fine here too, but so does removing the \'s and &&'s altogether and just leaving the commands on separate lines... – elmugrat Jan 24 '11 at 11:02
	@elmugrat: But then you lose the conditional chaining. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jan 24 '11 at 11:05
	Ahhh true... somehow forgot about that. – elmugrat Jan 24 '11 at 11:09
	this problem was the line endings, which is due to the fact that I'm using cygwin on windows and not a different OS. Thanks. – Hamlet D'Arcy Jan 24 '11 at 11:58

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