Any text printing application that doesn't interpret the text at all? [closed]

Question

Is there any Linux application that just prints whatever you give it WITHOUT doing ANY sort of interpretation? So regardless of what I send to it, it would always output exactly what I send to it?

I want something with the functionality of echo or printf, but without interpreting the \ and everything else.

Here's the kind of application I want:

newcommand "sa"" '' " "' ''""d f\sad\ f\sad\ \df\\ h\df\\\\\ sdf\h\sdfh\"" """" ''" " "ds\f\\\\ $%% \\as\ fsa\dg\ \afd\g\ \df\g \\df\g\\\\ n\ \n \\ sa\d \as \t a fsad g"" DF"G ""SD"F"" "DF"SG" """"Ds f"G" 'dsf'g 'sdf" G'ds f'g"SD fG"sd'f'g 'SFD""" ' > testfile1
cat testfile1
"sa"" '' " "' ''""d f\sad\ f\sad\ \df\\ h\df\\\\\ sdf\h\sdfh\"" """" ''" " "ds\f\\\\ $%% \\as\ fsa\dg\ \afd\g\ \df\g \\df\g\\\\ n\ \n \\ sa\d \as \t a fsad g"" DF"G ""SD"F"" "DF"SG" """"Ds f"G" 'dsf'g 'sdf" G'ds f'g"SD fG"sd'f'g 'SFD""" '

I can't find any program with this functionality. Basically, every positional parameter is outputted as is, including " and '. The only things that aren't outputted as-is would be |<> for obvious reasons

Okay, here's an even better example of what I want:

I want something that does, in command line and in one single line, something that can be achieved using nano or vi and writing one full line of text.

Answer 1

Those ", \ are part of the shell syntax, they are not something that is passed to the command, the command cannot do anything about those.

The

printf %s 'foo " bar' "bar ' baz" > file

command line is code in the sh language (where the space, ', ", > characters have a specific meaning), it's not a line that it passes to the printf utility.

That's interpreted by the shell to run printf with %s, foo " bar and bar ' baz as arguments and its stdout redirected to file.

All printf sees is that list of arguments, it doesn't see the shell code (or python code if printf was called from python rather than a shell) that was used for it to be called with that list of arguments. printf %s will print each of those without doing any interpretation which will result in file containing foo " barbar ' baz.

Here you could use another shell syntax construct: the here-document, where the here-document delimiter is quoted, in which case, no interpretation is done:

cat << 'EOF' > testfile
"sa"" '' " "' ''""d f\sad\ f\sad\ \df\\ h\df\\\\\ sdf\h\sdfh\"" """" ''" " "ds\f\\\\ $%% \\as\ fsa\dg\ \afd\g\ \df\g \\df\g\\\\ n\ \n \\ sa\d \as \t a fsad g"" DF"G ""SD"F"" "DF"SG" """"Ds f"G" 'dsf'g 'sdf" G'ds f'g"SD fG"sd'f'g 'SFD""" '
EOF

The only restrictions on the text are:

• except with zsh, it can't contain NUL bytes
• it can't contain EOF on its own line (you can use a different delimiter if need be)
• except when the text is empty, there will always be a trailing newline character added.

Or you could run:

cat > file

After which it's cat and no longer the shell that will take your user input, then you can enter the content as you wish and end with Ctrl+D.

As a hack, you could rely on the fact that shells don't do any interpretation of text in comment and retrieve the command line from the saved history and output what's past the #. For instance, with the bash shell, interactively:

fc -l -0 | cut -d '#' -f3- > testfile #the text here with \ ' "

Answer 2

It’s not a Linux-specific application, but cat does just that when run without arguments: it copies its standard input to its standard output, with no change.