Here is a nice little trick to display the output in the same line :

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      &nbsp;<span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re5">-ne</span> <span class="st0">"output\<span class="es1">\r</span>"</span>
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The trick here is simple, first we disable the <a class="zem_slink" title="Newline" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline">newline printed by <a class="zem_slink" title="Echo (command)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_%28command%29">echo command with the &#8221;-n&#8221; option and then we enable the interpretation of the <a class="zem_slink" title="Backslash" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash">backslash characters with the &#8221;-e&#8221; option. As the &#8221;\r&#8221; is used as <a class="zem_slink" title="Carriage return" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return">carriage return which brings you to the start of the line without the newline (like in <a class="zem_slink" title="Typewriter" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter">typewriter), we will use the same to get the desired effect. So, if you wanted a stopwatch for a 100 seconds on the console then this simple bash <a class="zem_slink" title="For loop" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_loop">for loop would do the same:

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      <span class="kw1">for</span> i <span class="kw1">in</span> <span class="sy0">`</span><span class="kw2">seq</span> <span class="nu0">100</span> <span class="nu0">1</span><span class="sy0">`</span><br /> <br /> <span class="kw1">do</span><br /> <br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re5">-ne</span> <span class="st0">"<span class="es2">$i</span>\<span class="es1">\r</span>"</span><br /> <br /> <span class="kw1">done</span>
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<img class="size-medium wp-image-2555" title="bash screenshot for the script output" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/temp-300x170.gif" alt="bash screenshot for the script output" width="300" height="170" />

Have fun playing with this and comment if you find some other interesting use of the same.

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