How do I insert a string containing escaped characters (\n, \t, etc) as separator for the seq command? The standard format includes a newline character: $ seq 3 1 2 3 But if I try to add something plus a newline, the backslash is escaped and a literal "\n" is used instead: $ seq -s "$\n" 3 1\n2\n3 The same happens using simple quotes, no quotes, or other escaped characters: $ seq -s "\t" 3 1\t2\t3 $ seq -s \t 3 1t2t3 This is not the standard behavior for commands such as echo, so I'm a bit confused here... Edit: Ideally, I'd like a somewhat portable solution (that works in tsch as well as bash, for instance), and without resorting to Perl or other languages.