The response is unsatisfactory.
First of all, the mention of the "printf" command only mentions its use
for control characters and newlines. It does not mention the use of
printf if you want to print something like '-n'. So, no available
documentation actually mentions the problem I reported.
While someone could perhaps deduce the problem (from the nonexistance
of '--'), it seems like it is perhaps worth a few extra words in the
documentation. If anyone uses /bin/echo and doesn't realize
the possibility of a problem, he or she can be stuck with
a rather annoying silent, intermittent, data-dependent problem.
And, the bug report was specifically indended for /bin/echo,
not for the echo built into the shell.
Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
This is an automatic notification regarding your Bug report
#303719: /bin/echo: echo: documentation is missing a cross-reference,
which was filed against the coreutils package.
It has been closed by one of the developers, namely
Thomas Hood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Their explanation is attached below. If this explanation is
unsatisfactory and you have not received a better one in a separate
message then please contact the developer, by replying to this email.
Debian bug tracking system administrator
(administrator, Debian Bugs database)
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Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 15:06:25 +0100
From: Thomas Hood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Echo can give unexpected results because the first argument
can be interpreted either as an option or a thing to echo.
The package maintainer says "use prinf instead",
as a work-around.
=20
That information ought to be in echo's man page,
at least in the "See Also" section, if not in the
"Bugs" section.
There are two tricky things about "echo". The first is this:
NOTE: your shell may have its own version of
echo, which usually supersedes the version described
here. Please refer to your shell=92s documentation
for details about the options it supports.
[from echo(1)]. The second is this:
Options must precede operands, and the normally-special
argument `--' has no special meaning and is treated like any other
STRING.
[from the info node].
Both are already documented. The printf alternative is also mentioned
on the info page:
Portable programs can use
the `printf' command if they need to omit trailing newlines or output
control characters or backslashes. *Note printf invocation::.
--=20
Thomas Hood
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