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From: ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: SysV shell questions
Message-ID: <7468@elsie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 18:47:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: elsie.7468
Posted: Mon Aug 24 18:47:15 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 06:14:24 EDT
References: <10279@orchid.waterloo.edu> <5980007@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <6330@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: NIH-LEC, Bethesda, MD
Lines: 21
Summary: say what?

> If there is going to be a merged "echo" with semantics the application
> developer can count on common to both Berkeley- and System V- based
> environments, obviously at some point all uses of echo in one environment
> or the other will HAVE to be revised.

I think the egalitarian thing to do here is have all uses of echo in BOTH
environments revised.  I'd accomplish this by replacing the "echo" command
with some new command--say, for example, say, as in
	
	$ say what\?
	what?

The old echoes would be left in place (but deprecated) for some period of time;
then removed (or set up to send broadcast messages to everyone on the system if
used :-).

The advantage of this approach is that it eliminates guesswork--if a shell
script uses "say", you *know* the shell script is counting on the agreed-upon
merged semantics being applied.
-- 
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