bash – echo command with option to display the output on the same line.

2010-09-21 2 min read Bash Fedora Learning Linux

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 ”-n” 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 ”-e” option. As the ”\r” 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: