My test case is actually wrong. The standard output would be the same in both cases.
Here is a proper test case: >.POSIX: >test: > A=\\ > echo $$A The expected result is >\ being written to the standard output. The actual result is an empty line being written. Another example is: >.POSIX: >test: > echo "a \\ > b" Which fails instead of printing >a \ >b The expected behaviour is useful because it allows portably quoting macros with here-documents, for example: > sed '$s:\\$::' <<\end; : \\ > $V\ > end should print the literal value of the macro $V that can contain single quotes and special characters. I believe there is no other way to achieve this with POSIX make.
