Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!ka From: ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Echo Message-ID: <6557@june.cs.washington.edu> Date: 30 Nov 88 14:18:11 GMT Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle Lines: 20 I've been implementing a public domain shell and I'm wondering what to do about the echo builtin. The System V echo command interprets a number of escape sequences (e.g. \n for newline) which the BSD echo does not, so I can... 1. Implement the System V echo on the grounds that it will make it easier to run System V shell scripts. 2. Implement the BSD echo on the grounds that it's the "right" approach (since the System V echo is useless if you want to echo an arbitrary string unchanged). 3. Don't provide an echo builtin, so users get whatever echo command is installed in /bin. This follows the principle of least surprise, but it makes shell scripts run slowly and does nothing for portability. Any suggestions? In particular I would like to know if any standards organizations have addressed the semantics of echo. Does anyone know what the merged AT&T/SUN UNIX is going to do about echo? Kenneth Almquist