Unix geeks: can you echo a -n???

Sxooter

OK, my partner would like to be able to use echo to output just -n. -n is an argument to echo. Other than some really convoluted ways, like echoing it wiht a leading space, then stripping off the space with sed or something equally weird, can you, with just echo and what not, echo a -n?

We've tried all the standard stuff, like \ to escape the - and all, nothing seems to work.

thorpe

at work atm so cant test it, but i would think a simple...

echo "-n"

would do it. no?

bubblenut

thorpe wrote:
at work atm so cant test it, but i would think a simple...

echo "-n"

would do it. no?

That get's eaten up by the shell.
shortest way I found was

echo "a-n" | sed "g/a//"
# or
awk 'BEGIN{print "-n"}'

bubblenut

echo -e "\055n"

goldbug

If you're going to be doing it alot.... you can always create a text file with just -n in it, then cat the text file 😃 Don't blame me when the performance sucks though 🙂

thorpe

That get's eaten up by the shell.

of course it couldn't be that simple.

Sxooter

And bubblenut wins the prize! I'm not sure what that prize it, but whatever it is, he wins it.

bubblenut

I'd like to thank my mother, my father and the echo man page 😉

Sxooter

You know, growing up, my mom treated the echo man page like a part of the family. little did I know back then...

Sorry, but that answer put a really strange story into my head...