Re: Solaris sed

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Jun 12, 2025, 16:40 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cREA6YdMgbZ59eGnU8SRWmfNR8bGGvLfTQEpS4PqKm9mg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <b2d23be73902c8433295e2a5f30b051d044e227c.camel@mad-scientist.net>

On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 9:44 AM Paul Smith <paul@mad-scientist.net> wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> On Thu, 2025-06-12 at 01:50 -0400, Eric Sunshine wrote:
> > Had it used the simpler:
> >
> >     echo "$foo"
> >
> > this sort of problem (forgetting the "\n") would never have occurred.
>
> Just be aware that echo is not well-standardized: many versions of echo
> accept extra options or treat certain chars specially.  So, printf
> (which IS well-standardized) is always safer unless you are 100% sure
> that the text on the echo command line is simple: cannot start with a
> "-", doesn't contain special chars like backslash, etc.
>
> For portability I (personally) always prefer printf unless I know
> exactly what the text contains (like showing a static string).

Yup, you're right. I always do the same when I can't trust the argument to be `echo`-safe, but apparently I wasn't thinking of that case when I wrote the email. Thanks for the dose of sanity.