[plug] bash, echo and tabs

[Matt Kemner]

Hi Steve

On Wed, 6 Aug 2008, quoth Steve Boak:

> however if I type "echo `df -h /mnt`", I get
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda3 2.0G 125M 1.9G 7% /

> with all the tabs and the CR replaced by spaces.

Instead of using echo (which replaces those whitespace characters as
you've discovered" try using printf(1) which is designed to format text
exactly how you want it - there are printf() functions or equivalents in
most programming languages, and the command line version works much the
same.

For example try:

 printf "%s\n" "`df -h /mnt`"

 man 1 printf    for more info on the command line program, and

 man 3 printf    for info on the C function it implements (to see what
                 formatting flags are available)

 - Matt