Re: [PATCH/RFC v3 2/7] gettext: Add a Gettext interface for shell scripts

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 2, 2010, 08:53 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTim-z6JYmyvl5QWycPV9orsUu8qLg2ZVFP6ZeVLC@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4C05FAEF.2040205@viscovery.net>

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 06:32, Johannes Sixt <j.sixt@viscovery.net> wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> [When you resend the series in such a manner that you collect a Cc list
> manually, please do *not* include me. I'm not interested in this series.]
>
> Am 6/2/2010 1:39, schrieb Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason:
>> +    # Not everyone has echo -n
>> +    case $(echo -n) in
>> +        \-n)    Xn=   ; Xc='\c' ;;
>> +        *)      Xn=-n ; Xc=
>> +    esac
>
> Don't use 'echo'; use 'printf %s'.

I didn't write this code (as the comment says) but I /thought/ that the whole point of it was to autodetect if echo -n worked, and if so use it because it'd be faster than printf "%s", otherwise use some evil foo\n\c hack.

That hack doesn't work on bash ('\c' produces a space), maybe it doesn't work anywhere. Do you have a shell that doesn't support echo -n? What does it output there?

I wouldn't be surprised if it did need to be changed to printf "%s". I'm just curious where it broke and how.