Re: [RFC] war on echo in scripts

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 9, 2010, 14:30 UTC
Message-ID: <20100709143011.GA1980@burratino>
In-Reply-To: <7vocehmfe9.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

>> +echo() {
>> +	printf '%s\n' "$*"
>> +}
>
> As long as we don't have "echo -n" and "echo -e", this should
> work, but...

Yes, it’s ugly.  And it could make for surprises in user scripts.

"echo -n" has been disallowed in core git since v0.99.9m^2~52 (Use printf rather than echo -n, 2005-12-06). Some echos seem to expect '\c' instead.

"echo -e" is not allowed either, to support the Almquist shell and its descendents; see v1.2.0~4 (avoid echo -e, there are systems where it does not work, 2006-02-12).

Maybe we can avoid impacting user scripts by making this opt-in? i.e., something like

 if test -n "$GIT_FIX_ECHO"
 then
	echo() {
		printf '%s\n' "$*"
	}
 fi

I am still not sure about the portability of overriding builtins.