bash - trans spaces to \n and then echo?

[Lorin Ricker]

Okay, now I've run into something subtle: I want to take a string of space-delimited words, translate the space-chars (" ") into newlines (\n) and just echo the result, which should output each word on a separate line, right? Like this:

echo -e $( dirs | tr " " "\n" )

Actually, I want to reformat the output of dirs -- so let's say that it generates something like:

~/dir3 ~/dir2 ~/dir1 ~

...and, just for the heck of it, I want it to print it this way:

~/dir3
~/dir2
~/dir1
~

But this code-frag spits out only the original single line, no matter what I do; even works this way with a printf instead of the echo command.

I know that the tr is basically working, as I can demonstrate: replacing the "\n" with "X" produces:

~/dir3X~/dir2X~/dir1X~

I've tried other tricks/variants, all with the same result: output on one line.

Any ideas or advice? Any bash experts out there? TIA

[Lorin Ricker]

I just rendered the specific question somewhat moot -- a little online digging reminds me that dirs has a -v option, which prints DIRSTACK in vertical (multiline) format, what I wanted.

But, putting dirs aside, what about the general question? Given a string of space-delimited workds, how to translate spaces into newlines and echo the result the way I want? I'm missing something here!... TIA

[jwbrase]

I find that just

dirs | tr " " "\n"

works without the echo. Echo seems only to put a newline in when there's an explicit escape sequence in the input. If there's an actual newline in the input it converts it to a space.

[Telengard C64]

...and, just for the heck of it, I want it to print it this way:

~/dir3
~/dir2
~/dir1
~

foo$ pushd /etc
/etc ~/foo
etc$ pushd /tmp
/tmp /etc ~/foo
tmp$ help dirs
dirs: dirs [-clpv] [+N] [-N]
    Display the list of currently remembered directories.  Directories
    find their way onto the list with the `pushd' command; you can get
    back up through the list with the `popd' command.

    The -l flag specifies that `dirs' should not print shorthand versions
    of directories which are relative to your home directory.  This means
    that `~/bin' might be displayed as `/homes/bfox/bin'.  The -v flag
    causes `dirs' to print the directory stack with one entry per line,
    prepending the directory name with its position in the stack.  The -p
    flag does the same thing, but the stack position is not prepended.
    The -c flag clears the directory stack by deleting all of the elements.

    +N  displays the Nth entry counting from the left of the list shown by
        dirs when invoked without options, starting with zero.

    -N  displays the Nth entry counting from the right of the list shown by
        dirs when invoked without options, starting with zero.
tmp$ dirs -p
/tmp
/etc
~/foo
tmp$ dirs | tr ' ' '\n'
/tmp
/etc
~/foo
tmp$

HTH

[Lorin Ricker]

Many thanks for the quick responses! Both are very helpful! -- L

[Telengard C64]

Many thanks for the quick responses! Both are very helpful! -- L

NP. It gave me an excuse to review the Bash builtins