Question

I have a variable in a shell script in which I’d like to format the data. The variable stores new data during every iteration of a loop. Each time the new data is stored, I’d like to insert a new line character. Here is how I’m trying to store the data into the variable.

VARIABLE="$VARIABLE '\n' SomeData"

Unfortunately, the output includes the literal '\n' Any help would be appreciative.

Answer 1

Try $'\n':

VAR=a
VAR="$VAR"$'\n'b
echo "$VAR"

gives me

a
b