ECHO(1)

📦
version 0.12.0 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💅 ECHO(1) — General Commands Manual 🎀

okay bestie, listen up, because echo is like... the main character of your terminal and you're about to be obsessed 💖

✨ NAME ✨

echo — display a line of text. that's it. that's the whole job. iconic behavior honestly 👑

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

echo [OPTIONS]... [STRING]...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Display a line of text. yep. that's literally the entire description. the bar is on the floor and echo still ate 💅✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -n — do NOT output the trailing newline. it's giving "no newline, no problem" 🚫
  • -e — enable interpretation of backslash escapes (we love a backslash that does something) 🔥
  • -E — disable interpretation of backslash escapes, and this is the default, so if you do nothing, this is what you get 😌
  • -h, --help — print help. your lil rescue blanket 🫶
  • -V, --version — print version. flex the build number bestie 💜
  • [STRING] — the text. the content. the moment. 🌈

🌟 EXTRA 🌟

Echo the STRING(s) to standard output. that's the whole vibe: you speak, it repeats, everyone's happy 🦋

if -e is in effect, these lil escape sequences get recognized, and ngl they're kind of everything:

  • \ — backslash
  • \a — alert (BEL) — a lil attention please 🚨
  • \b — backspace
  • \c — produce no further output — it just stops, no further questions 💀
  • \e — escape
  • \f — form feed
  • \n — new line (the classic) ⭐
  • \r — carriage return
  • \t — horizontal tab
  • \v — vertical tab
  • \0NNN — byte with octal value NNN (1 to 3 digits)
  • \xHH — byte with hexadecimal value HH (1 to 2 digits)

👑 VERSION 👑

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0 — that's how we're doing it out here 💖

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

print a text message. quick note bestie: quotes are optional:

echo "Hello World"

print a message with environment variables:

echo "My path is $PATH"

print a message without the trailing newline:

echo -n "Hello World"

append a message to the file:

echo "Hello World" >> file.txt

enable interpretation of backslash escapes (aka special characters, aka the fun ones):

echo -e "Column 1\tColumn 2"

print the exit status of the last executed command — and heads up, in Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell the equivalent commands are echo %errorlevel% and $lastexitcode respectively:

echo $?

pass text to another program through stdin:

echo "Hello World" | program
🫶 these examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. also, please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail — no cap, that's just the truth of it 😭

and that's the whole page babes 💜 this edition landed 2026-09-25, straight from the ECHO(1) manual in General Commands Manual — go forth and echo, you absolute queen 👑✨

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