When running in POSIX/sh mode, bash should either disable the echo builtin or stop giving special treatment to -e and -E. In particular, POSIX provides well-defined behavior for:
echo -e bash gives: blank line posix gives: line containing only "-e" echo -E bash gives: blank line posix gives: line containing only "-E" echo -e -n bash gives: no output posix gives: line containing "-e -n" POSIX leaves behavior unspecified when -n is the first argument, and also when any argument contains backslashes. However, if conformance to the XSI part of SUSv3 is also desired, -e must be default. I tend to think this is stupid, which you probably agree with, so I have no opinion on changing it to be XSI-conformant but I'm mentioning it anyway for completeness. Basically, my point is that bash, in POSIX/sh mode, should not provide nonconformant builtins for POSIX commands which prevent potentially conformant ones in the host system's path from being used. Either the bash versions should be conformant or they should get out of the way when in standards-conformant mode. Rich
