Question

In bash, some commands put their stdout BEFORE the command prompt and on the SAME line. For example:

$ printf message
message$ 
$ gettext -d gtk20 File
Fichier$ 

I want the stdout on a dedicated line with the command prompt on the NEXT line. I could precede with ‘echo’ and wrap in back ticks like this, but I wonder if there is a better way (an arg that can be always/often used, etc):

$ echo `printf message`
message
$
$ echo `gettext -d gtk20 File`
Fichier
$ 

Answer 1

Try adding a ; printf "\n" or ; echo after your command. The issue is that your output does not end with a newline.

You could also just inject the command output into a single printf "%s\n" command.