if I have a file like:
hello \n world
how can I print the contents of the file with the escape sequences interpreted, so in the terminal you see:
hello
world
I've tried cat file | xargs -I{} echo {} but that prints hello n world
printf's %b format specifier expands escape sequences:
$ printf '%b\n' "$(cat file)"
hello
world
To read from stdin an unadorned cat will do:
$ printf '%b\n' "$(cat)"
hello
world
I think
echo 'hello\\nworld' | xargs -I {} printf "%b" "{}"
is what you're after. But that requires you to have some control over the text sent over the pipe since it requires double backslashes.