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    Did you mean to use echo -n instead of echo -e? Commented Jul 23 at 17:17
  • @terdon I tried both echo -e and echo -n. -e for many tries with "\n", and possibly I've copied the wrong example. But given the answer from Stehen Kitt, this doesn't make a big difference, only, with -n the last words F and E are not separated. The answer implicitly explains that, too. Commented Jul 24 at 9:23
  • echo -e is the same as echo for this case, so it's weird to use an option that doesn't do anything. To put a space separator after every element including the last one, use echo -n 'A B C D E F ' (which is exactly what Stephen is doing with printf '%s ' with multiple args, vs. I'm using one quoted string so all the spaces between elements are a literal part of that string for clarity. I could also have done echo -n A B C ... F '' with an empty final element to get echo to invent a final space after the F, before the empty string.) Commented Jul 24 at 20:58
  • @PeterCordes as I explained to @ terdon, the "-e" is an accidental remnant form one of my many tries. And you are right with your solution to add an extra separator at the end of the line, that is what I finally did. Easy enough, once we understand what's going on. Commented Jul 25 at 5:37
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    Right, might as well leave it now. But the best thing would have been to remove the -e after it was first pointed out. Commented Jul 26 at 18:04