How to preserve line breaks when storing command output to a variable?

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Quote your variables. Here is it why:

$ f="fafafda
> adffd
> adfadf
> adfafd
> afd"


$ echo $f
fafafda adffd adfadf adfafd afd


$ echo "$f"
fafafda
adffd
adfadf
adfafd
afd

Without quotes, the shell replaces $TEMP with the characters it contains (one of which is a newline). Then, before invoking echo shell splits that string into multiple arguments using the Internal Field Separator (IFS), and passes that resulting list of arguments to echo. By default, the IFS is set to whitespace (spaces, tabs, and newlines), so the shell chops your $TEMP string into arguments and it never gets to see the newline, because the shell considers it a separator, just like a space.

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