In Linux shell bash script, how to print to a file at the same line?

Question

In Linux shell bash script, how to print to a file at the same line ?

At each iteration,

I used

 echo "$variable1"  >> file_name, 
 echo "$variable2"  >> file_name, 

but echo insert a newline so that it becomes

 $v1
 $v2 

not

     $v1 \tab  $v2

"\c" cannot eat newline.

this post BASH shell script echo to output on same line

does not help .

thanks

Solution 1

After wading through that question, I've decided that what you're looking for is echo -n.

Solution 2

If you are looking for a single tab in between the variables, then printf is a good choice.

printf '%s\t%s' "$v1" "$v2" >> file_name

If you want it exactly like your example where the tab is padded with a space on both sides:

printf '%s \t %s' "$v1" "$v2" >> file_name

Solution 3

few options there:

1. echo -n foo bar It's simple, but may not work on some old UNIX systems like HP-UX or SunOS. Instead the "-n" will be printed as well as the rest of the arguments followed by new line.
2. echo -e "foo bar\c" . The \c has meaning: "produce no further output". I don't like this solution personally, but some UNIX wizards use it.
3. printf %b "foo bar" I like this solution the most. It's quite portable as well flexible.

Solution 4

Use echo -n to trim the newline. See if that works

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