I've used -e on GNU's `echo` quite a bit as well. But FreeBSD also supports `printf` (as does Linux by the way), so it's not a great inconvenience the missing -

I've used -e on GNU's `echo` quite a bit as well. But FreeBSD also supports `printf` (as does Linux by the way), so it's not a great inconvenience the missing -e flag on FreeBSD's `echo`. $ printf "This\tis an\nexample\n" This is an example You can also use the usual C-style printf parameters as well: $ printf "This is %-20s example\n" another This is another example