In converting shell scripts from ksh to bash, I discovered that "typeset", a built-in command, functions well but issues invalid error messages.  
For example:

typeset -L9 zzzz

is suppose to left justify data placed into "zzzz", and will truncate the data if it's more then 9 characters long.  In fact this works, but the 
following error message is also issued:

typeset: unknown option: '-L'

The work-around is as follows:

typeset -L9 somename 2>/dev/null

Thanks for your help is fixing this bug