Re: [Help-bash] Using single quotes to escape a newline

[Greg Wooledge]

> On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 7:33 AM, Greg Wooledge <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 01, 2015 at 07:21:46AM -0700, Michael Convey wrote:
> > > Has the ability of single quotes to escape a newline changed since this
> > > book was written?
> >
> > No.  The book was simply wrong.
> >

On Wed, Jul 01, 2015 at 07:36:05AM -0700, Michael Convey wrote:
> Thanks. Is a backslash the only way to escape a newline?

That depends on what you're trying to do.  If you simply want to
create a list of words, formatted nicely within the source code, but
appearing as a horizontal string in the output, I wouldn't even
*create* a scalar string variable.  I'd store them in an array, and
create the "big horizontal string with spaces in it" with a command.

For instance:

words=(
these
are
my
words    # and you can even have comments!
)

echo "${words[*]}"