On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 08:56:02PM -0500, Kevin Korb wrote:
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> I am on dash version 0.5.8.2 on Gentoo Linux (USE=libedit -static).
> 
> The echo builtin does not work as described.  In the man page:
>  echo [-n] args...
>    Print the arguments on the standard output, separated by spaces.
>    Unless the -n option is present, a newline is output following the
>    arguments.
> 
> However, in actual usage:
> % dash
> $ echo testing
> testing
> $ echo -n testing
> - -n testing
> $ /bin/echo -n testing
> testing$
> 
> This is causing me problems when I attempt to switch /bin/sh from bash
> to dash.

Hmm, where does the 0.5.8.2 version come from, I wonder?
The latest release is 0.5.8 [0] and I cannot reproduce your
issue with it on Fedora [1] (and note that, afaik, Fedora doesn't
apply any special patches that could affect this behavior).

Try rebuilding dash with USE=-libedit and see if it changes
anything.  If not -- I would bug the Gentoo maintainers.

P

[0] http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/dash/
[1] dash-0.5.8-3.fc23.x86_64