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Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 08:23:29 -0800
To: "Robert Mark Bram" <relaxedrob AT no DOT spam DOT optushome DOT com DOT au>,
   cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From: Randall R Schulz <rrschulz AT cris DOT com>
Subject: Re: Continue command to new line
In-Reply-To: <a6mutk$e9d$1@main.gmane.org>
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Robert,

The retort:

This is an extremely elementary shell usage question and is in no way 
Cygwin specific. As such, it's not really appropriate on the Cygwin mailing 
list (nor the Gmane News mirror you're using).

I recommend you get a beginners book for Unix / POSIX / Linux systems 
(Cygwin is none of these, per se, but from the shell user's perspective, it 
is closest to Linux, I'd say). Cygwin includes two popular interactive 
shells, BASH and TCSH. Choose a book or other tutorial material that 
emphasizes the shell you're going to use (BASH is the default). Once you're 
beyond the basics, the shells diverge in their details.


The answer:

End the line you wan to continue with a backslash immediately prior to 
hitting return. On the following line you'll get the prompt "> " to signal 
that you're on the 2nd or subsequent line of a continued command. You can 
continue doing this as long as you like. The first line whose return is not 
preceded by a backslash will cause the shell to interpret and execute the 
concatenation of all those lines (with the continuation backslashes 
removed, of course).


Randall Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA


At 23:25 2002-03-12, Robert Mark Bram wrote:
>Howdy all!
>
>Is there a way to split up commands issued on the prompt so that they can 
>be spread over more than one line?
>
>Thanks!
>
>Rob


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