I guess the newline that echo without -n would add doesn't matter that much. OTOH -e, depending on your shell, is either necessary (e.g. bash), or unnecessary

I guess the newline that echo without -n would add doesn't matter that much. OTOH -e, depending on your shell, is either necessary (e.g. bash), or unnecessary but harmless (e.g. zsh) or insufficient (e.g. dash). If you want to print binary stuff portably, you need to use printf(1). (Shameless plug: you can use https://github.com/jwilk/printfify https://github.com/jwilk/printfify to generate printf commands for binary files.) In this case, base64 encoding is much more efficient: /EiD5PDowAAAAEFRQVBSUVZIMdJlSItSYEiLUhhIi1IgSItyUEgPt0pKTTHJSDHArDxhfAIs IEHByQ1BAcHi7VJBUUiLUiCLQjxIAdCLgIgAAABIhcB0Z0gB0FCLSBhEi0AgSQHQ41ZI/8lB izSISAHWTTHJSDHArEHByQ1BAcE44HXxTANMJAhFOdF12FhEi0AkSQHQZkGLDEhEi0AcSQHQ QYsEiEgB0EFYQVheWVpBWEFZQVpIg+wgQVL/4FhBWVpIixLpV////11IugEAAAAAAAAASI2N AQEAAEG6MYtvh//Vu/C1olZBuqaVvZ3/1UiDxCg8BnwKgPvgdQW7RxNyb2oAWUGJ2v/VY2Fs Yy5leGUA