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From: dgk@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (David Korn[eww])
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: SysV shell questions
Message-ID: <2888@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: Thu, 27-Aug-87 19:57:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.2888
Posted: Thu Aug 27 19:57:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 14:23:25 EDT
References: <10279@orchid.waterloo.edu> <5980007@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <6330@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 18
Summary: Sys V vs. BSD echo


I have tried to find a satisfactory solution for the echo incompatibility
problem for the last several years.

No solution works.  A lot of code will break no matter what you do.  I propose
that we use a new command to replace echo.  The new command would be able
to subsume both the AT&T and BSD functionality.

This solution will not break any old scripts.  In about 50 years or so, all
the old scripts with echo can be converted to use the new command.

ksh has the print built-in command which subsumes both BSD and Sys V echo.
print -r does not perform escape sequence expansions
print -n does not echo a newline
print -u2 will echo into file descriptor 2.

David Korn
{ihnp4,allegra}ulysses!dgk