Get result of two or more commands in the same line and redirect the result to a file

Forgive me for the long title of the post but titles should be descriptive of the content that follows and I just wanted to make sure of it for this article.

Generally when we chain commands by using semicolons, the output of each distinct command follows on a new line as shown below:

[root@pbox ~]# uname -a;date
Linux pbox 3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Nov 22 16:42:41 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Sun Sep 10 13:46:26 IST 2017

But what if we have a scenario in which we require the resulting output of the commands we execute to be on the same line. A scenario where I've had this requirement was to interpolate multiple variable names into a csv file. A quick and easy way would be:

[root@pbox ~]# echo "$UID, $PWD" > text.csv

[root@pbox ~]# cat text.csv

0, /root

[root@pbox ~]#

For some odd reason which I can't recall this simple redirect wasn't working for me so I had to come up with something fancier.

I decided to use a subshell, enclose the commands within that subshell and redirect them to the required file. Here's an example:

[root@pbox ~]# ( echo -n "Logged into `hostname`"; echo ", on `date`" ) > text

[root@pbox ~]# cat text

Logged into pbox, on Sun Sep 10 13:57:47 IST 2017

[root@pbox ~]#

The -n flag with the echo removes the new line it add at the end of it's output.

We could do something similar without invoking a subshell and that is by using curly braces {}.

Here's an example:

[root@pbox ~]# { echo -n "This is a `uname -s` box "; echo ", btw Today is `date`" ;} > text

[root@pbox ~]# cat text

This is a Linux box , btw Today is Sun Sep 10 14:01:37 IST 2017

[root@pbox ~]#