How do I tell bash to continue the command on the next line when commands are so large and can not fit on a single line under Unix like operating systems?
You need to use the \ character i.e a backslash. From the bash man page:
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A non-quoted backslash ‘\’ is the Bash escape character. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of newline. If a \newline pair appears, and the backslash itself is not quoted, the \newline is treated as a line continuation (that is, it is removed from the input stream and effectively ignored).
commannd1 arg1 arg2 \
arg3 arg4
OR
commannd1 -arg1 -arg2 \
-arg3 -arg4 \
-arg5 -arg6
Example
The following command is used to compile and install nginx web server. A backslash (\) is used as to continue command on the next line:
./configure --without-http_autoindex_module --without-http_ssi_module \
--without-http_userid_module --without-http_auth_basic_module \
--without-http_geo_module --without-http_fastcgi_module \
--without-http_empty_gif_module --with-openssl=/lib64 |
./configure --without-http_autoindex_module --without-http_ssi_module \
--without-http_userid_module --without-http_auth_basic_module \
--without-http_geo_module --without-http_fastcgi_module \
--without-http_empty_gif_module --with-openssl=/lib64
Posted by: Vivek Gite
The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.
