strange echo output

Question

Can anybody explain this behaviour of the bash shell which is driving me nuts

[root@ns1 bin]# export test=`whois -h whois.lacnic.net 187.14.6.108 | grep -i inetn         


        

Answer 1

Your test contains something like

1234567 -I INPUT -s 187.12/14\r-J DROP

which, due to the carriage return, is visible only as

-J DROP -I INPUT -s 187.12/14

The CR moves the cursor to the start-of-line, where it then overwrites previous characters.

You could try

echo "$test" | od -bc

to verify this.