How do I print '-e' with echo?

Question

I know that echo -e is not an ordinary command. I have tried echo '-e' and echo \-e but they still don`t work.

Answer 1

The best solution is not to use echo, but to use printf instead.

printf '%s\n' -e

This works with arbitrary variables:

var=-e
printf '%s\n' "$var"

...meaning you don't need to do any special preparation/modification elsewhere in your code based on the knowledge that a value will be echod.

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Incidentally, the POSIX shell command specification for echo acknowledges that it is unportable as implemented, and contains a note on that subject:

It is not possible to use echo portably across all POSIX systems unless both -n (as the first argument) and escape sequences are omitted.

The printf utility can be used portably to emulate any of the traditional behaviors of the echo utility as follows (assuming that IFS has its standard value or is unset):

The historic System V echo and the requirements on XSI implementations in this volume of POSIX.1-2008 are equivalent to:

printf "%b\n" "$*"

The BSD echo is equivalent to:

if [ "X$1" = "X-n" ]
then
    shift
    printf "%s" "$*"
else
    printf "%s\n" "$*"
fi

New applications are encouraged to use printf instead of echo.

(Emphasis added).

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That said, on GNU systems, an alternative exists: Requesting standards-compliant behavior.

$ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 /bin/echo -e
-e

Answer 2

• with newline

  echo -en '-e\n'
  

• without newline

  echo -e '-e\c'
  

• with spaces around:

  echo '-e '
  echo ' -e'
  

• using backspace (thanks to Joseph R.):

  echo -e ' \b-e'
  

  (it does output SPC BS - e LF, but when sent to a terminal that's rendered as -e as BS moves the cursor back one column to the left causing - to overwrite the SPC)

The behaviour of bash's echo builtin may depend on bash version. It also depends on the environment (POSIXLY_CORRECT, SHELLOPTS and BASHOPTS variables), the options (posix, xpg_echo), the build options and argv[0] (sh vs bash). Here tested with GNU bash 4.2.53(1), default build, default options, empty environment, invoked as bash. Works also with zsh 5.0.5.

Answer 3

With GNU echo's -e with the ASCII codes for the characters:

$ /bin/echo -e '\055'e
-e

055 is the octal ASCII number for - (see man ascii for quick reference).

Answer 4

While the obvious, standard and recommended solution is to use printf, to do it with echo can be quite tricky depending on the implementation (not as tricky as for -n though).

POSIX.2017 compliant echos

POSIX requires echo -e to output -e<newline>. So it's just

echo -e

there. POSIX compliant echos in that regard (most of them are not POSIX compliant in other regards, the POSIX spec is close to useless when it comes to echo) include:

• the echo builtin of bash when both the xpg_echo and posix options have been enabled (at runtime or build time like for the /bin/sh of Apple macOS). set -o posix; shopt -s xpg_echo (the posix option can also be enabled if invoked as sh or when POSIXLY_CORRECT or SHELLOPTS=posix is in the environment).
• the /bin/echo of certified UNIX systems (AIX, macOS, Solaris at least) and most BSDs
• the echo builtin of dash, ksh88, the Bourne shell, csh, tcsh, posh, rc, es, akanga
• GNU echo (/bin/echo on GNU systems) when POSIXLY_CORRECT is in the environment.
• the echo builtin of mksh and some other pdksh-derives when their posix option is enabled.
• the echo builtin of yash when $ECHO_STYLE is either unset or one of SYSV, XSI, BSD, DASH, RAW

implementations that support -e

Includes echo of research Unix V8 (where it comes from), GNU, busybox, the echo builtin of bash, zsh, pdksh and derivatives, fish, some ash-based shells like busybox sh or the sh of some BSDs, recent versions of ksh93 (on some systems, and with some values of $PATH) with their default settings, yash with $ECHO_STYLE one of GNU or ZSH:

echo -e '-e\n\c'

The implementations that support -e invariably support -n, so:

echo -ne '-e\n'

would work as well.

zsh

zsh's echo is the only implementation that I know that supports an end-of-option marker (-).

echo - -e

Making it the only Bourne-like shell echo that can output arbitrary data (also because it's the only one that supports NUL bytes in its variables and the arguments of its builtins) with echo -E - "$data")

Except for the NUL-byte issue, other implementations that can output arbitrary data are FreeBSD or macOS /bin/echo where you can do:

/bin/echo "$data
\c"

(in that implementation, \c is only recognized at the end, and no other escape sequence is supported).

And yash's:

ECHO_STYLE=RAW echo "$data"

(though note that yash variables can only hold text, so not arbitrary byte sequences in locales where not all sequences of bytes can form valid characters like in those using UTF-8 as their charmap).

Answer 5

Use -n to avoid newline:

$ echo -n - && echo e
-e