echo

Print text

low risk

interactive breakdown — edit the command and press Explain
$ 
⚠ Risks & cautions
What it does

Writes its arguments to standard output. Behavior of -e/-n differs between shells; printf is more portable.

Common flags
FlagMeaning
-nDo not print the trailing newline
-eInterpret backslash escapes (bash)
Examples
echo "$PATH"Show PATH · explain & risk-check →
echo "line" >> file.txtAppend a line to a file · explain & risk-check →
Related
printf tee cat
Open the full explainer →More in Text Processing

Reference text is hand-written and may be incomplete — check man echo for your version. Test destructive commands on a non-production system first.