Hi again, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> # historical XSI and ash behavior That was a little misleading. Just for fun, here's some history[*]. Seventh edition echo did not have any escape sequences. System III and SVR1 echo interpet \0xx The original Almquist shell interprets \0xx. There is a #define a person can comment to make it not interpret escape sequences unless the "-e" option is passed. 4.3BSD-Net/2 flipped that switch in ash, so escape sequences are not interpreted unless the "-e" option is passed. Debian ash 0.3 was based on NetBSD ash and probably inherited the 4.3BSD-Net/2 behavior. Debian ash 0.3.1-10 learned some tricks from GNU echo, including an "-E" option to override -e and disable interpretation of escape sequences. In light of the incompatibility between SVR1 behavior (used by SunOS, for example) and the 4.3BSD-Net/2 behavior (used by the various BSDs), SUSv2 specified the SVR1 behavior with XSI shading. The "Application Usage" section states: "It is not possible to use echo portably across all systems that are not XSI-conformant unless both -n (as the first argument) and escape sequences are omitted". In 0.3.5-7 and 0.3.5-8, Debian ash dropped the -e and -E options and moved back to SVR1 (and XSI) behavior. [*] see also http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/echo+printf/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
