STRING-REPEAT(1)

🦋 string-repeat(1) — the fish-shell girlies' guide to multiplying strings 💅

okay so bestie, you know how the string command is basically the main character of fish-shell? this is one of her little subcommands, and it lives in the fish-shell manual. we're talking string repeat — the multiply-a-string girlie. let's get into it ✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

string repeat [(-n | --count) COUNT] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-N | --no-newline]
              [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string repeat [-N | --no-newline] [-q | --quiet] COUNT [STRING ...]

two whole forms, no cap. pick whichever vibe fits 🫶

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the tea: string repeat takes your STRING and just… repeats it. -n or --count times. that's it, that's the gig 💅

Then there's -m or --max — that one caps how many characters get outputted (and no, the newline does not count toward that total, she's excluded from the math 🎀). You can run --max all by itself or team it up with --count. and when both of them show up to the party together? here's the rule, bestie, listen close:

• max chars get outputted unless the final repeated string size is less than max — and in that case, the string keeps repeating until count has been reached.

Both --count and --max are totally fine with any number greater than or equal to zero. and if you pass zero? nothing gets outputted. literally nothing. ghost town 💀

oh and this part is important: the first argument is interpreted as COUNT if --count or --max are not explicitly specified. so watch out — that first arg is doing double duty depending on what flags you brought 👑

and if you throw in -N or --no-newline, the output won't have that newline character hanging off the end. tiny detail, huge slay.

Exit status: 0 if the yielded string is not empty, 1 otherwise. she's honest about it 😭

also, real talk — -q and --quiet are chilling right there in the synopsis, iykyk 🧚

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✨ EXAMPLES ✨

🍓 Repeat Examples 🍓

watch the icon do her thing:

>_ string repeat -n 2 'foo '
foo foo

>_ echo foo | string repeat -n 2
foofoo

>_ string repeat -n 2 -m 5 'foo'
foofo

>_ string repeat -m 5 'foo'
foofo

>_ string repeat 2 'foo'
foofoo

>_ string repeat 2 -n 3
222

see that last one? 2 as the string, -n 3 as the count, and boom — 222. that first-argument-as-COUNT rule really said "not today" when -n is already in the building 💀🔥

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👑 Copyright 👑

fish-shell developers — that's the crew behind all this ✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 we did it. this one's from fish-shell 4.9, dated Sep 08, 2026 — go forth and repeat responsibly, mwah 💖🫶🌈