t4201-shortlog.sh does bad things to my terminal

Running t4201-shortlog.sh in a non-utf8 terminal has some unpleasant effects:

bash-3.00$ xterm -v
XFree86 4.2.99.903(174)
bash-3.00$ locale
LANG=en_US
LC_CTYPE="en_US"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US"
LC_TIME="en_US"
LC_COLLATE=POSIX
LC_MONETARY="en_US"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
LC_PAPER="en_US"
LC_NAME="en_US"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US"
LC_ALL=
bash-3.00$ sh ./t4201-shortlog.sh --verbose
Created commit b8ab028: This is a very, very long first line for the commit message to see if it is wrapped correctly
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
Created commit 3da0b85: Thð

(The cursor is now about half way the last line.)

It appears that this message is printing a control character to turn off echoing, because the terminal appears completely unresponsive afterwards. Typing "reset" restores the terminal.

Is this really necessary?

skimo