How to suppress EOF when echoing messages to wall from a script - bash

Question

In my bash script, I use many echo "......." | wall lines to broadcast event notifications as they occur.
However, the resulting output on the console gets unwieldy:
Broadcast Message from root#BIGFOOT
(somewhere) at 16:07 ...
Photo backup started on Mon Oct 7 16:07:55 PHT 2013
Broadcast Message from root#BIGFOOT
(somewhere) at 16:08 ...
Photo backup successfully finished on Mon Oct 7 16:08:05 PHT 2013
Broadcast Message from root#BIGFOOT
(somewhere) at 16:08 ...
You may now unplug the Photo Backup HDD.
Instead, we'd like it to appear more like the following,
Broadcast Message from root#BIGFOOT
(somewhere) at 16:07 ...
Photo backup started on Mon Oct 7 16:07:55 PHT 2013
Photo backup successfully finished on Mon Oct 7 16:08:05 PHT 2013
You may now unplug the Photo Backup HDD.
which is kind of like what would appear in an open write chat session.
Is this possible? If so, how should I modify my script in order to achieve the desired console output?

Answer 1

Each wall invocation will add the "broadcast message" and blank newline at the top of your code.
As a result, if you want to notify your users at timely intevals (e.g. actually at the start + end of the backup) then you will have to live with the banner message.
As #devnull suggested, you could batch up the messages. One approach would be to declare a script wide variable say $logmsg and then have two functions depending on whether it is something you want the user to know eventually or something they want to know now
function log_message
{
$logmsg = "$logmsg\n$1"
}
function log_message_now
{
log_message "$1"
echo "$logmsg" | wall
logmsg = ""
}
(note I've not actually tested the above, so may need a touch of debugging!)

Answer 2

Use a compound command:
{
echo "line1"
echo "line2"
echo "line3"
} | wall