From: Kevin Korb <kmk@sanitarium.net>
To: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>, dash@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [bug?] echo -n does not work as described
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 22:46:02 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <56440B7A.4040508@sanitarium.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <56440A1E.8070701@sanitarium.net>
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On 11/11/2015 10:40 PM, Kevin Korb wrote:
> On 11/11/2015 10:14 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
>> On 11/11/2015 06:56 PM, Kevin Korb wrote:
>>> 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:
>
>> Which man page? Coreutils'?
no, /usr/share/man/man1/dash.1.xz on my box
> I was quoting the dash man page. I did quote the result of the
> coreutils version of echo (/bin/echo) which worked correctly.
>
>> Read it further:
>
>>> NOTE: your shell may have its own version of echo, which
>>> usually super‐ sedes the version described here. Please refer
>>> to your shell's docu‐ mentation for details about the options
>>> it supports.
>
>> By the way, 'echo -n' is non-portable, and POSIX says you should
>> use 'printf' instead.
If dash refuses to supply a compatible version of echo then dash must
not include a builtin version of echo. If dash didn't have a broken
embedded version of echo I wouldn't have a problem.
> This isn't my problem. I am trying to use dash as a replacement
> for /bin/sh and it is failing horribly. I am not the authors of
> the problem scripts. Plus, frankly, it is absurd to require printf
> where echo [-n] should work correctly according to the dash
> documentation.
>
>> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/echo.html
>
>> A string to be written to standard output. If the first operand
>> is -n, or if any of the operands contain a <backslash>
>> character, the results are implementation-defined.
>
>>> $ echo -n testing -n testing
>
>> Dash's implementation-defined behavior for -n is to treat it the
>> same as every other string. Thus, this is not a bug in dash, at
>> least according to POSIX.
Then why does the man page say otherwise?
> Either this is a bug in dash or in dash's man page. The man page
> is clear about how echo and echo -n should work. But the reality
> is very different.
>
>>> This is causing me problems when I attempt to switch /bin/sh
>>> from bash to dash.
>
> This isn't stuff I have written. This is stuff that I am tired of
> modifying to be dash compatible.
>
> Either dash's echo command should operate as documented or the
> documentation should be corrected.
>
>> It's probably not the only bashism you've been relying on. You
>> may want to try using checkbashisms
>> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/checkbaskisms/) to help you
>> find other portability pitfalls.
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> majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>
- --
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Kevin Korb Phone: (407) 252-6853
Systems Administrator Internet:
FutureQuest, Inc. Kevin@FutureQuest.net (work)
Orlando, Florida kmk@sanitarium.net (personal)
Web page: http://www.sanitarium.net/
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-11-12 3:46 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-11-12 1:56 [bug?] echo -n does not work as described Kevin Korb
2015-11-12 3:14 ` Eric Blake
2015-11-12 3:40 ` Kevin Korb
2015-11-12 3:46 ` Kevin Korb [this message]
2015-11-12 8:35 ` Seb
2015-11-12 16:12 ` Kevin Korb
2015-11-12 21:24 ` Stephane Chazelas
2015-11-12 8:10 ` Bastian Bittorf
2015-11-12 16:11 ` Kevin Korb
2015-11-19 12:36 ` Bastian Bittorf
2015-11-12 10:03 ` Petr Šabata
2015-11-12 16:18 ` Kevin Korb
2015-11-12 16:55 ` Kevin Korb
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