What does the semicolon do when it is run in a bash command?

Question

For example, when running

echo a; echo b

in the terminal, its output is:

a
b

It seems to me that the semi

Answer 1

it's a way to simulate a newline.

echo a; echo b

is equivalent to

echo a

echo b

Answer 2

The ; separates the two commands.

echo a; echo b

It lets the bash know that echo a and echo b are two separate commands and need to be run separately one after the other

Try without semicolons

$ echo a echo b
a echo b

Here the statement is taken as a single command echo and a echo b is passed as parameter to the echo

Answer 3

It's a statement separator. You could also try

sleep 1; echo a

which will wait one second and then display a. As would

sleep 1 && echo a