echo a string withou a new line

[hp admin]

How can I added a string at the end of a file without return to a new line.

Please help.

[Mark Grant]

Depends

echo -n "hello" will not produce a newline but Berkley "echo" would be something like

echo "hello\c". I'd try the first one of these first.

[RAC_1]

may be echo "xxx\t"

echo xxx|tr "\n" " "

[Sam White]

You need to add a no carrage return to the end of your echo statement.

ie.

echo "blah blah\c"

Note the \c at the end.

[Umapathy S]

In ksh and sh you can do as
echo "hello\c"

[Mark Grant]

Karim,

Just re-read your post with a little more detail and perhaps need to expand these answers a bit.

echo -n "some kind of string" >> file

Non-Berkley

echo "some kindof string\c" >> file

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
Another way is to use printf, using printf without any formatting arguments will do the job. Ex:

printf abcde

[hp admin]

Thanks a lot for your responses.

when I was in a terminal, all your commands run correctely.

But to added the string at the end of a file (exactelly just after the last word of the last line), it dosen't work.

Please help me again.

[john korterman]

Hi,
what was the command you used? If you open the file with xvi you can check if there is a "0a" char at the end or not. Is there?

regards,
John K.

[Mark Grant · Accepted solution]

Karim,

If you want to add the text to the end of a file as you describe, you are going to have to remove the newline from the end of the file first. In perl you might do

#!/usr/bin/perl

$DATA=`cat datafile`;
chop $DATA;
print "$DATA"."The string I want at the end\n";

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

with awk :
#!/bin/sh

export STRING="abcde"
awk -v string=$STRING '
{ print $0;
}
END{ printf("%s",string);}' yourfile > out1

result in out1

Rgds,
Jean-Luc

[Bruno Ganino]

I don't understand what is the type of file in question.
If file is command-file of shell
echo "argument\c" print line without new-line character
echo "argument\n" new-line character
echo "argument\t" tab
echo "argument\r" carriage return.
if file is text-file and you edit it, (example with vi editor) you must to be in insert mode.
If lines added is in text-screen you must verifies setup of terminal in the options New-line and Wrap (check setting of tab also).
Bruno

[hp admin]

Thanks again for your answer:

Here the solution with ksh:
#!/usr/bin/ksh
DATA=`cat /etc/PATH`
echo "$DATA""le_mot_a_ajouter\c" > /tmp/PATH.new

and with perl:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$DATA=`cat datafile`;
chop $DATA;
print "$DATA"."The string I want at the end\n";

[Mark Grant]

Karim,

I think I'm right in saying that there is a maximum string length in the shell (could be that I'm still living in the past on that though) so the shell solution here might not work for bigger files.

[Bruno Ganino]

Karim,
I hope that your problem is solved... but i don't sure totally.
Good luck!
Bruno