SYNOPSIS

shtool echo [-n|--newline] [-e|--expand] string

DESCRIPTION

shtool echo is an echo(1) style command which prints string to stdout and optionally provides special expansion constructs (terminal bold mode, environment details, date, etc) and newline control. The trick of this command is that it provides a portable -n option and hides the gory details needed to find out the environment details under option -e.

OPTIONS

The following command line options are available.

-n, --newline

By default, output is written to stdout followed by a ``newline'' (ASCII character 0x0a). If option -n is used, this newline character is omitted.

-e, --expand

If option -e is used, string can contain special "%x" constructs which are expanded before the output is written. Currently the following constructs are recognized:

%B

switch terminal mode to bold display mode.

%b

switch terminal mode back to normal display mode.

%u

the current user name.

%U

the current user id (numerical).

%g

the current group name.

%G

the current group id (numerical).

%h

the current hostname (without any domain extension).

%d

the current domain name.

%D

the current day of the month.

%M

the current month (numerical).

%m

the current month name.

%Y

the current year.

EXAMPLE

 #   shell script
 shtool echo -n -e "Enter your name [%B%u%b]: "; read name
 shtool echo -e "Your Email address might be %u@%h%d"
 shtool echo -e "The current date is %D-%m-%Y"

HISTORY

The GNU shtool echo command was originally written by Ralf S. Engelschall <[email protected]> in 1998 for Website META Language (WML) under the name buildinfo. It was later taken over into GNU shtool.