On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 at 12:55, Martin D Kealey <[email protected]>
wrote:

> The existing behaviour is available (and is the default):
>

Question:
Should I change the default to “:auto”, to reduce the boilerplate in new
code?

I imagine it's fairly rare to have “read -e -s” in existing code, since
“-e” is *currently* pointless when “-s” is in effect, so there aren't
likely to be many who will be surprised by this, and even if they are, it's
entirely cosmetic.

Having “set echo-substitution :auto” as the default would make it clearer
to naïve users that their shell isn't "stuck" when the terminal is in “stty
-echo” mode, though they might still ask questions along the lines of “why
is my shell prompt in ‘password’ mode?”

Chet: is there any likelihood of incorporating this patch?

The git branch <https://github.com/kurahaupo/bash/tree/patch-echosubst>
includes 4 independent commits before the actual patch: three very minor
fixes for other issues (because I got tired of the compiler warnings), and
one to implement GNU's recommendations for quoting
<https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Quote-Characters-1> (because
I want to avoid the temptation to poke my own eyes out); see git log for
details. There's also an extras branch
<https://github.com/kurahaupo/bash/tree/patch-echosubst-extras> with
additional minor tweaks that I'd like to see included, but I don't want
them to hold up the main patch. (Most of these I've also sent privately by
email.)

-Martin

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