Echo commands in emacs

There's (at least^[1]) two separate commands analogous to :echo in vim in emacs.

Built-in

The built-in option is (message):

(message "some message")

For arguments or string formatting, use format

(message (format "%s" "arg"))

Note

This also appends to the *Messages* buffer, which may or may not be desirable. Might be better if you want to copy out the command afterwards.

Evil mode

Evil mode has evil-echo that acts as (message (format)):

(evil-echo "%s" "arg")