Question

Possible Duplicate:
Printf example in bash does not create a newline

I have a sample script “array-test.sh” which aggregates three functions into one array:

[user@host ~]$ cat array-test.sh 
#!/usr/bin/env bash

function1() {
   printf '%s\n\n\n' "cat" 
}

function2() {
   printf '%s\n\n\n' "dog" 
}

function3() {
   printf '%s\n\n\n' "mouse" 
}

for function in\
    function1\
    function2\
    function3; do
    array[$((index++))]=$($function)
done

echo "${array[@]}"
[user@host ~]$ ./array-test.sh 
cat dog mouse
[user@host ~]$ 

However, newline characters are missing. What causes such behavior?

Answer 1

As indicated by ÁlvaroG.Vicario, backticks (and $()) remove trailing newlines. There’s no escaping it, so if you must, you’ll have to work around it:

#!/usr/bin/env bash    

function1() {
   printf '%s' "cat"
}

function2() {
   printf '%s' "dog"
}

function3() {
   printf '%s' "mouse"
}

for function in\
    function1\
    function2\
    function3; do
    array[$((index++))]=$($function)
done

# manually add three newlines here
array=("${array[@]/%/$'\n'$'\n'$'\n'}")

echo "${array[@]}"