Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!jcricket!sjs
From: sjs@jcricket.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Echo (and how to deal with what you got)
Message-ID: <12592@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 12 Dec 88 16:13:39 GMT
References: <6557@june.cs.washington.edu> <960@etnibsd.UUCP> <2258@xyzzy.UUCP> <81086@sun.uucp>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: sjs@ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer)
Organization: Bellcore
Lines: 19

Regardless of whether you prefer "echo -n" or "echo \c" sometimes you
have to write a shell script that will prompt users correctly
regardless of how echo works.  I have been using the following trick
for a while now, and I figured other people might find it useful:

#!/bin/sh
P1= P2=
if test "`echo -n a; echo b`" = "ab"
then P1="-n"	# BSD style
else P2="\c"	# Sys V style
fi

echo $P1 "A prompt string: "$P2
read RESPONSE

Possibly I picked this trick up from Larry Wall's "rn" configure
script.

Stan Switzer  sjs@ctt.bellcore.com