How to print a newline in an MS-DOS script?

Question

I want to print the output of a program in MS-DOS so I wrote a .bat file that says:

cls
ruby foo.rb

But the output - as it appears on my command prompt - looks like this:

c:\workspace>ruby foo.rb
foo output
c:\workspace>

I wanted to insert a newline into the output using MS-DOS because I don't want to pollute my Ruby code with anything not related to what the code is supposed to be doing.

The only commands in MS-DOS that look like what I want are 'type' and 'print' but both are for printing files.

I tried creating a text file with two blank lines and outputting it using the 'type' command but it looks messy.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Answer 1

echo. will produce a new line.

So your script should look something like this:

@ECHO OFF
cls
echo.
ruby foo.rb

Answer 2

Even if here are 4 answers with the same tip to use ECHO., it's not the best solution!

There are two drawbacks.

1. It's slow
   ECHO. is ~10 times slower than a normal echo command, that's because ECHO. will force a disk access

2. It can fail
   If a file exists with the name ECHO (without extension) then each ECHO. command will result in a file not found error, instead of echoing an empty line.

But what do you can do then?
For a simple empty line, there are many working ways.

echo+
echo=
echo;
echo,
echo:
echo(

But sometimes you want a secure way to echo the content of a variable even if the variable is empty or contain odd content like /? or \\..\..\windows\system32\calc.exe.

ECHO<character>%variable%

echo=/?
echo;/?
echo,/?
echo:\\..\..\windows\system32\calc.exe

Then the most commands will fail, only ECHO( works in any situation.
It looks a little bit strange, but it works and it does not need nor make any trouble with a closing bracket.

Answer 3

how about:

@echo off
cls
echo.
ruby foo.rb
echo.

bye