1

I have the following code snippet: 

#!/bin/sh 

if [ $1 = hi ]; then 
    echo 'The first argument was "hi"'
else
    echo -n 'The first argument was not "hi" -- ' 
    echo It was '"'$1'"'
fi

And I don't know what the flag -n after echo in the else statement stands for, does anyone knows the answer?

Thank you very much!

almrog
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    Try looking at the man page for echo. It's a fairly straight forward flag – hakskel Apr 12 '20 at 21:01
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    @hakskel ... depending on the shell echo might be a built-in (e.g. in Bash, Zsh). So while there may be a man-page for /bin/echo or so, help echo would be the way to go in that case (i.e. Bash only). And type echo can be used to find out which one your shell uses (built-in or command etc ..., i.e. in both Bash and Zsh again). – 0xC0000022L Apr 12 '20 at 21:16
  • http://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/echo.1.html – BlueManCZ Apr 12 '20 at 21:20
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    Welcome on U&L! You'll find various relevant details in Why is printf better than echo?. – fra-san Apr 12 '20 at 21:47
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    Another option is to experiment and see if you observe any difference. Try (1) echo hi and (2) echo -n hi. Does echo -n behave differently? – Andy Dalton Apr 12 '20 at 23:08

1 Answers1

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The traditional way to learn about the options and parameters of a un*x command is by using the man (manual) command, e.g.

man echo

If you issue that on your system, you should see a description of the echo command including something like

Echo the STRING(s) to standard output.

-n do not output the trailing newline

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