How do I ring the terminal bell during a shell script?

How do I ring the terminal bell during a shell script?

The answer depends on your Unix version (or rather on the kind of
"echo" program that is available on your machine).

A BSD-like "echo" uses the "-n" option for suppressing the final
newline and does not understand the octal \nnn notation. Thus
the command is

echo -n '^G'

where ^G means a _literal_ BEL-character (you can produce this in
emacs using "Ctrl-Q Ctrl-G" and in vi using "Ctrl-V Ctrl-G").

A SysV-like "echo" understands the \nnn notation and uses \c to
suppress the final newline, so the answer is:

echo '\007\c'


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