If there's no newline, cat won't output one, and bash will put the prompt right after:

    [dale@host ~]$ echo -n "hi" > test
    [dale@host ~]$ cat test
    hi[dale@host ~]$

If you add a \r, then the cursor goes back to the start of the line, and the prompt overwrites the "hi".

    [dale@host ~]$ echo -en "hi\r" > test
    [dale@host ~]$ cat test
    [dale@host ~]$

Yeah except the file ends in \r so the OP may have had their prompt longer than any of the lines (e.g. [user@hostname cwd] $) such that they couldn’t tell.

depends on the terminal

What terminal interprets "\r" as "clear the line"? I would have thought that is considered a bug.

You want to know how I know you never wrote your own C program or terminal emulator?

/r means "slash, then the letter r". \r means carriage return, which doesn't clear the line, just moves the cursor to the left margin. Unless you're on an Apple ][, in which case CHR$(13) moves to the beginning of the next line, but still doesn't clear anything. And CHR$(4) is where the real magic happens, but it has to follow a CHR$(13)!

]PRINT CHR$(4) + "INIT HELLO"

you're absolutely right. It's impossible that I've ever written any C, and just fat fingered the / and \.

...

Point is, \r goes to the beginning of the line, without going to the next one, as you reiterated, so you can output a spinner using

    -
    /
    -
    \

No, "\r" means return the cursor to the start of the line without clearing the line.

Try this:

  $ echo -ne "ooo\rf\n"
  foo

If a "\r" cleared the line, you would just see a "f", not a "foo".

isn't that what I said?

You want to know how I know you never wrote your own text editor?

Carriage return is a carriage return, not a delete or backspace or clear line.

>Carriage return is a carriage return

To be fair it isn't.

On typewriters it also adds a new line. On Mac, it is (used to be?) the new line character.

I don't know how non vt terminals handled it.

who said anything about clearing? I just meant that \r goes to the beginning of the line, so you can output a busy spinner

> What terminal interprets "\r" as "clear the line"? I would have thought that is considered a bug.

>> most of them do. it's what a /r means. it's how cli programs can easily output a spinning wheel/similar for busy status.

You did.