echo (display text)

Displays the text or variables specified.

 Format:    echo textstring Examples:  echo Hello World            echo $HOME 

The first example displays Hello World on the screen. The second example displays the contents of the variable HOME. $ indicates that HOME is a variable. HOME contains the path to your home directory, so the second example displays the path to your home directory on the screen.

You can use some special characters with the echo command to format the output, shown in the first table below. The second table shows the most useful options for echo.

Char	What It Does	Example
\a	Alert (rings bell)	echo \aerror
\b	Backspace	echo \bHello
\c	Suppress new line	echo $text_line\c
\f	Form feed	echo Hello World\f
\n	Start a new line	echo Hello \nWorld
\r	Carriage return	echo Hello World\r
\t	Insert a tab	echo Hello \tWorld
\v	Insert a vertical tab	echo \vHello World
\\	Literal	echo This is a backslash \\

Opt	What It Does	Example
-n	Don't start a new line after text	echo -n Hello echo " World Hello World