How to escape newline in the commandline?

Question

I need to do this:

$ echo '
File
Contents
' > my-file

The problem is that the resulting file contains a newline at the beginning and at the end.

I tried this but didn't work:

$ echo '\
File
Contents\
' > my-file

What can I do?

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-23 17:05:54Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Maybe you can use a HERE document?

cat << '==end' > my-file
File
Contents
==end

edited Jul 23 '12 at 17:05

answered Jul 23 '12 at 16:56

choroba
3,305415

	Yes this looks good. But how to send the result to a file? Right now it's only printing it on the screen. – ChocoDeveloper Jul 23 '12 at 17:03
	@ChocoDeveloper: Use redirection. Answer updated. – choroba Jul 23 '12 at 17:05
	Ah, that was tricky. Thanks! – ChocoDeveloper Jul 23 '12 at 17:06

Peter · Answer 2 · 2012-07-23 16:48:38Z

up vote 1 down vote

printf "%s\n%s\n%s\n" "Line 1", "Line 2", "Line 3"

answered Jul 23 '12 at 16:48

Peter
664

	I need to be able to paste the file contents without any change, I can't separate it into lines. And I need to be able to execute this as a command, I don't want to open vim and paste it manually. – ChocoDeveloper Jul 23 '12 at 16:51
	I think I cannot understand what you want to do. Do you want to just copy some files to another one? – Peter Jul 23 '12 at 16:52
	I want to copy/paste file contents (ie: something I don't want to write by hand each time, like a config file) into a command to create the file, to automate an installation. – ChocoDeveloper Jul 23 '12 at 16:54
	Then, a good example, is to use grep. For example, you find the line you want and then, count the lines you want to copy: `grep myline -A6` will copy from "myline" and the next 6 lines. – Peter Jul 23 '12 at 16:55

Thor · Answer 3 · 2012-07-23 16:55:50Z

up vote 1 down vote

I would use cat instead:

cat > file

Paste what you want to go into file and finish with Ctrl+d on an empty line.

answered Jul 23 '12 at 16:55

Thor
2,253420

	But I want to do everything in a single command. If I can paste to a file, I could as well just have pasted into the file I need. – ChocoDeveloper Jul 23 '12 at 16:57
	@ChocoDeveloper: ok, you're probably looking for the heredoc option then, see choroba's answer but with `> file` after the first `==end`. – Thor Jul 23 '12 at 17:04

Michael Hampton · Answer 4 · 2012-07-23 18:09:11Z

up vote 1 down vote

Another simple answer not mentioned is:

echo -e "Line 1\nLine 2"

The -e option causes echo to interpret backslash escape sequences.

answered Jul 23 '12 at 18:09

Michael Hampton
4,1841627

4 Answers