Printf example in bash does not create a newline

Question

Working with printf in a bash script, adding no spaces after \"\\n\" does not create a newline, whereas adding a space creates a newline, e. g.:

Answer 1

Your edited echo version is putting a literal backslash-n into the variable $NewLine which then gets interpreted by your echo -e. If you did this instead:

NewLine=$(echo -e "\n")
echo -e "Firstline${NewLine}Lastline"

your result would be the same as in case #1. To make that one work that way, you'd have to escape the backslash and put the whole thing in single quotes:

NewLine=$(printf '\\n')
echo -e "Firstline${NewLine}Lastline"

or double escape it:

NewLine=$(printf "\\\n")

Of course, you could just use printf directly or you can set your NewLine value like this:

printf "Firstline\nLastline\n"

or

NewLine=$'\n'
echo "Firstline${NewLine}Lastline"    # no need for -e