Explaining Different Approaches to Line Continuations in Bash, Python and Powershell

The aim of this page📝 is to review the concept of line discontinuation in bash, python and powershell.

2 min readFeb 3, 2023

By default — each separate line constitutes a different command in Bash
Escape character — \ - within echo command at the end of line escapes the newline, provided you put it into double quotes (quoting is a different story altogether)

echo "This will print
as two lines."

>>> This will print
>>> as two lines.


echo "This will print \
as one line"

>>> This will print as one line.

What matters here is escape character outside of strings, at the end of script lines
If a script line ends with a pipe | then an escape \ is unnecessary as pipe is a "natural line continuator"
According Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide, it is a good programming practice to always escape the EOL of code continuing into the newline
I have not been doing this in python, nor in powershell
Quite the opposite!
In Powershell, my approach has been defined by Get-PowerShellBlog > Bye Bye Backtick: Natural Line Continuations in PowerShell and I would never use a ` (backtick, which is an escape char) as it's just invisible
In Python, my approach has been, naturally, defined by https://pep8.org/#maximum-line-length which clearly prefers implied line continuation inside parentheses, brackets and braces
Let’s stay in bash and conclude that the following are synonymous and the third one is recommended if you want to break code into multiple lines

echo "$(pwd)" | cut -d "/" -f5
>>> Admin

echo "$(pwd)" | 
cut -d "/" -f5
>>> Admin 

echo "$(pwd)" | \
cut -d "/" -f 5
>>> Admin