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Comment by ilikejam | Hacker News Reader

Sure you can:

dave@cronus $ ./echo -n "-n

dave@cronus > "

-n

dave@cronus $

Not pretty, though.

Cute, but does not work with bash builtin echo, for which two -n's equals one -n.

   bash-3.2$ echo -n -n foo
   foobash-3.2$

Like always with echo -n, no matter what you try, it's not portable.

So...

[dave@mini ~]$ echo -n "-n foo

> "

-n foo

[dave@mini ~]$

Easy!

All respect for persistence, but that's not a solution, because the OP wanted to echo just "-n". I put the foo in to better show what was happening.

For similar reasons,

  echo "" -n

does not work, etc.

' echo -n "-n

" ' works fine with the bash built-in. It echo's "-n".

You're right. I should have said "no sane way to do it". :-)

Or echo -en "-n\n".