[email protected] wrote:
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 04:27:16PM -0600, Blues Renegade wrote:
I need help getting the printf command to properly format a multi-line
"Usage:" message I've put in a bash shell script.
# Usage message assigned to var, USAGE
USAGE="\nUsage: `basename $0` [DIRECTORY]\n\n"\
"NOTE:\tIf no directory is specified, `basename $0`\n"\
"\tstarts searching in the current directory.\n"\
"\tSearch results are displayed on-screen and\n"\
"\twritten to the file, 'dupes-found.txt',\n"\
"\tin the top-level search directory.\n"
# Using %b printf correctly translates the escape sequences,
# but strips all the white space out of the message.
printf "%b" $USAGE
# echo -e $USAGE will show you how I intend this message to look. ;)
# When using echo -e and creating the $USAGE message with spaces
# instead of /t tab chars escaped, all the spaces were stripped but one.
I've always been lazy and used echo, but it's time I step up to printf
and gain more control of my output.
TIA for any help, suggestions, links, you can provide!
John
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printf "%b" "$USAGE"
It was treating every word in 'USAGE' as a separate argument, and
concatenating them together.
Thank you! Thanks for the explanation and the correct example. I had to
look twice to notice the quotes, but they fixed it!!
John
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