Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!riddle!domo From: domo@riddle.UUCP (Dominic Dunlop) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Echo Summary: V.4 echo will examine PATH to find out how to behave Message-ID: <949@riddle.UUCP> Date: 6 Dec 88 12:19:49 GMT References: <6557@june.cs.washington.edu> Reply-To: domo@riddle.UUCP (Dominic Dunlop) Organization: Sphinx Ltd., Maidenhead, England Lines: 37 In article <6557@june.cs.washington.edu> ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) writes: >I've been implementing a public domain shell and I'm wondering what to >do about the echo builtin... > >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? Nobody in the large traffic I've seen seems to have given an explicit answer, so I'll quote from the _UNIX System V Release 4.0 Migration Reference Guide, UNIX System V_ distributed at the recent developer conferences. It's a preliminary document, and doesn't have an AT&T select code, which means you'll almost certainly be out of luck if you try to order yourself a copy. But, if you want to try, AT&T's numbers are (800) 432-6600 (USA), (800) 255-1242 (Canada) and (317) 352-8557 (elsewhere). You may at least learn when the final version will be published. Corresponding migration guides for BSD, Sun OS, and Xenix were also distributed at the conferences. Anyway echo(1) In release 4.0, the echo command has been enhanced to support both the SunOS and UNIX System V version of the command. echo automatically selects between the two definitions according to the value of the PATH variable. The UNIX System V definition is the default definition. However, if the PATH contains the entry /usr/ucb, and that entry comes before /usr/bin, then the SunOS version of echo is selected. This enhancement was made to support the transition of BSD applications, and may be withdrawn in UNIX System V releases beyond 4.0. So now you know. -- Dominic Dunlop domo@sphinx.co.uk domo@riddle.uucp