This sounds ridiculously easy, and it is with other shells. But I can't seem to figure out how to get echo to display newlines. For example -
cat myFile
shows the file as it actually exists, which is what I want -
this
is
my
file
whereas my script, which contains the following -
#!/bin/csh
set var = `cat myFile`
echo "$var"
removes all the newlines, which is not what I want -
this is my file
Thanks in advance.
The problem isn't with the echo command, it's with csh's handling of backticks. When you execute
set var = `cat myFile`
the newlines from myfile are never stored in $var; they're converted to spaces. I can't think of any way to force a csh variable to include newlines read from a file, though there might be a way to do it.
sh and its derivatives do behave the way you want. For example:
$ x="`printf 'foo\nbar'`"
$ echo $x
foo bar
$ echo "$x"
foo
bar
$
The double quotes on the assignment cause the newlines (except for the last one) to be preserved. echo $x replaces the newlines with spaces, but echo "$x" preserves them.
Your best bet is to do something other than trying to store the contents of a file in a variable. You said in a comment that you're trying to send an e-mail with the contents of a log file. So feed the contents of the file directly to whatever mail command you're using. I don't have all the details, but it might look something like this:
( echo this ; echo that ; echo the-other ; cat myFile ) | some-mail-command
Obligatory reference: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/