Bash ignoring newline character

Question

Easiest to explain with some code:

body=''
NEWLINE=$'\n'

for name in $names # don't worry about the names array
do
    body+="$name ${NEWLINE}"
done

The output is something like this:

Joe Michael Tony Peter

Why isn't it like this?

Joe 
Michael 
Tony 
Peter

This should work, as the newline is wrapped in single quotes, but it is ignored.

Any ideas?

Thanks

You don't show enough code to reproduce. How do you generate the output? Unquoted, perhaps? — Benjamin W., Nov 20 '21 at 16:13
@BenjaminW. Ah! You are right. It is the echo which is messing things up, not how I am generating the string. Thanks. I'll add an answer for others in case they come across this while Googling. — Stiofán, Nov 20 '21 at 16:17
`names` might be an array, but `$names` is equivalent to `${names[0]}` in that case. Are you sure you actually *have* an array, or just a newline-delimited string? — chepner, Nov 20 '21 at 16:22

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '21 at 16:19

1

Thanks to @Benjamin W. for pointing me in the right direction.

My issue isn't how I generate the string (that's correct), it's how I'm outputting the string.

This won't work:

echo $body

But this will:

echo "$body"

answered Nov 20 '21 at 16:19

Stiofán

1 Answers1