Free-Format Output Using cat

Abstract

There are many ways to send script output to the screen or to a file. The technique demonstrated in this chapter for creating preformatted output is simple to code. Many times I have coded scripts that write entries to a log, create a configuration file, or generate formatted usage output one line at a time by redirecting the output of echo statements. This works perfectly well, but the code looks a bit ugly and becomes tedious; it is also laborious to make changes because each echo statement has to be formatted individually.