title: Appending a line break to an output file in a shell script
body: <p>I have a shell script that I am executing in Cygwin (maybe this is the problem). For this bit of code, I simply want to write the first line, and append a line break:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo "`date` User `whoami` started the script." &gt;&gt; output.log
  echo &gt;&gt; output.log
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But the output.log file never seems to take the break. If I run the script multiple times, it's as if the second echo doesn't write to the file.</p>
  
  <p>I've also tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo -e "`date` User `whoami` started the script.\n" &gt;&gt; output.log
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It yields the same results.</p>
  
  <p>The odd thing is if I just enter the second echo statement above on the command line, without appending to the file, it gives me the expected output with the trailing line break.</p>