OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse

ramachandrajr has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

sorry if i shouldnt post bash questions in perl monks but its an easy one .when i write: input

echo --version
[download]

output

--version
[download]

input

code="\tcode"
echo $code
[download]

output

tcode
[download]

instead of the version details and also \n\a\c\b\x are not working well right now i am reading shell scripting so is this book too old and amendments are made in shell script? or am i doing something wrong

Comment on OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse Select or Download Code

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Re: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by RichardK (Parson) on Sep 13, 2015 at 11:18 UTC
Bash has it's own built-in version of echo, which is why you can't display the version. Reading the manual for bash you'll see that if you want to interpret backslash escaped characters you need to use the -e option. `echo -e "\tcode"` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by ramachandrajr (Novice) on Sep 14, 2015 at 04:16 UTC
wow i am dumb,you are absolutely a time saver bro,i knew that all perl users use linux ;p	[reply]
Re: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by Corion (Patriarch) on Sep 13, 2015 at 11:26 UTC
Why don't you use Perl if `echo` is too complicated for you?	[reply] [d/l]
Re: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by NetWallah (Canon) on Sep 13, 2015 at 17:19 UTC
Responding to the yet un-answered part of your OT query: You can get the BASH version by: `$ echo $BASH_VERSION 4.2.25(1)-release # Just the Major version: echo $BASH_VERSINFO 4` [download] Another alternative: `$ bash --version GNU bash, version 4.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gp +l.html> This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.` [download] or even: (Ctrl-x Ctrl-v) , which shows `GNU bash, version 4.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)` [download] Software efficiency halves every 18 months, thus compensating for Moore's Law.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by choroba (Cardinal) on Sep 14, 2015 at 10:54 UTC
`"\tcode"` doesn't mean anything special in bash. To turn `\t` into a tab character, you have to use `$'\t'`: `#! /bin/bash string=$'\tcode' echo "$string"` [download] لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by parv (Parson) on Sep 14, 2015 at 15:30 UTC
`x\ty` works as expected in zsh 4.3.10; does not in /bin/sh (FreeBSD ash) & bash 4.3.42 as shown above. Then again I much prefer to use the command `(/usr/bin/)printf`, NOT the shell built-in, unless just writing one-off script on the command line.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: OT: unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by ramachandrajr (Novice) on Sep 16, 2015 at 14:33 UTC
thanks every one i learned a lot of things from u guys	[reply]
Re^2: OT unable to use the options of echo in my shell terminal bash ofcourse by ramachandrajr (Novice) on Sep 16, 2015 at 14:31 UTC
awesome i didn't even know that learned something today thank u	[reply]