9fans archive / 2008 / 03 / 586    prev next


    search terms are split using tokenize    
    from:regexp searches From: lines    
    subject:regexp searches Subject: lines    
    before:yyyy[/mm[/dd]] and after:yyyy[/mm[/dd]] specify date range    

    powered by grep(1)    
From: Douglas A. Gwyn <dagwyn@com...>
Subject: bug in echo?
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:58:14 GMT

"Gorka Guardiola" <paurea@gma...> wrote in message 
news:599f06db0803260640s15d37727q2f619f1a3c86dc47@mai...
> The fix doesn't break anything, ...

Any change in externally visible behavior could in principle
"break something" that had relied on the previous behavior.

That said, "echo" has historically been a problem since
without support for option arguments it is too limited,
but with support for option arguments one has to worry
about accidental options, as in the original question.  With
incomplete support for option arguments it is just confusing.

I got disgusted enough with the variety among versions of
"echo" that impacted upon otherwise portable shell scripts
that I designed my own version that supports the Unix
command syntax standard, is flexible enough to provide
all the useful option behavior modifications (including
optionally enabling embedded \-escapes), and can be
"aliased" to any of the usual flavors of "echo" by including
thright combination of options in the prefix.  I named it
"gecho" (for "generic", not "GNU") and can provide specs
and/or implementation upon request.