CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosshell
neowulf33
neowulf33

Reputation: 645

`command echo` doesn't seem to respect the `echo` arguments

The command utility in Mac OS X which is at version 2.6.0 doesn't seem to honor the arguments passed in for the echo command.

If this is a legit bug - can you kindly point me to the project page for this utility. Thanks!

Expected

$ command echo -e "activate\ndeactivate"
activate
deactivate

Actual

$ command echo -e "activate\ndeactivate"
-e activate\ndeactivate

Additional Info

$ command ls -al
total 3
drwxr-xr-x  13 siva  staff   442 Sep 28 10:52 .
drwxr-xr-x   7 siva  staff   238 Sep 19 14:21 ..
drwxr-xr-x  13 siva  staff   442 Sep 28 10:52 .git

$ command ls -a1 
.
..
.git

$ echo -e "activate\ndeactivate"
activate
deactivate

Upvotes: 2

Views: 87

Answers (1)

Charles Duffy
Charles Duffy

Reputation: 295473

echo -e is a nonstandard bash extension. Not only is it not required by the standard, it's not even allowed by the standard, which explicitly states that "Implementations shall not support any options".

bash breaks the standard by honoring -e as an option (except when both posix and xpg_echo options are set, in which case it behaves identically to your external echo command).

Thus, when you run the external echo command provided by your OS vendor, it's an implementation compliant with http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/echo.html, and it responds to -e by printing the string.

As a POSIX-compliant alternative to echo -e "$foo", use printf '%b\n' "$foo".

Upvotes: 5

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