breaking of output into new lines

Question

I created a script ./abc.

I want to break the ouput into new lines.

mycode:

#!/bin/bash
dir="$1"

echo -n "size of file:"
du -hba $dir | sort -n -r | tail -1

my output is:

size of files: 20kb /path/to/sport

I want the output as:

size of files: 20kb
         /path/to/sport

Answer 1

I would consider something like this:

du="$(du -hba "$dir" | sort -n -r | tail -1)"
printf "size of file: %s\n\t%s\n" "${du/$'\t'*}" "${du#*$'\t'}"

The du variable takes the result of your search. It is then split into two tab-separated parts for the printf statement, with each of the parts interpolated into the format string with %s.

This construct should handle filenames containing newlines, tabs, and other unusual characters.

Answer 2

./abc | sed 's/files: /files: \n/'

I tried on my system with echo command:

$ echo "size of files: 20kb /path/to/sport" | sed 's/files: /files: \n\t/'
size of files:
        20kb /path/to/sport