Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!mks!egisin
From: egisin@mks.UUCP (Eric Gisin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Echo
Message-ID: <594@mks.UUCP>
Date: 7 Dec 88 18:55:55 GMT
References: <6557@june.cs.washington.edu> <14799@mimsy.UUCP> <656@root44.co.uk>
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ont.
Lines: 17

In article <656@root44.co.uk>, gwc@root.co.uk (Geoff Clare) writes:
> Personally, I think fewest existing scripts would break if the SysV
> behaviour were adopted, but with the '-n' option added.  There can't
> be that many BSD scripts which contain '\' in an echo string, whereas
> use of '\c' in SysV scripts is extremely common.

The System V behaviour will break things like
	echo "$1"
when the variable contains a '\'.
> 
> X/Open specifies SysV behaviour for echo.  What does POSIX say?

System V with no enhancments (Draft 7).

There are already some enhancements from ksh in P1003.2
(job control, aliases, expressions, new test, fixed function execution),
I think a fix for echo is more important.