Bash ANSI C quoting not correctly quoting newlines

Question

ANSI C Quoting in bash is supposed to read strings the same way C(or python with single quotes) would.

printf $'"Hello, World!\\n"'

#expected output (no newline, the slash is escaped)
"Hello, World!\n"

#actual output (one newline)
"Hello, World!
"

But it seems to not be working properly. Is that a bug?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 12 '19 at 09:22

3

You're using printf wrong. You have provided the string where a format string is expected, and printf interprets \n accordingly. Use a proper format string and provide the ANSI-C-quoted string as an argument:

$ printf '%s\n' $'"Hello, World!\\n"'
"Hello, World!\n"

Or, to show more clearly where the argument goes in the format string:

$ printf '|%s|\n' $'"Hello, World!\\n"'
|"Hello, World!\n"|

answered Dec 12 '19 at 09:22

muru

72,889

echo -e also interprets escape sequences. To print a string verbatim, use printf %s – muru Dec 12 '19 at 10:10
funny I missed that, -e option is explicitly for interpreting escape sequences. – Angular Orbit Dec 12 '19 at 10:15
If you have a few dozen minutes to spare, have a look at https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/65819/70524 – muru Dec 12 '19 at 10:19

Bash ANSI C quoting not correctly quoting newlines

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