Bug 6498 - 'echo' escapes displayed not interpreted
Summary: 'echo' escapes displayed not interpreted
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: sh-utils
Version: 6.1
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Bill Nottingham
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
: 6768 (view as bug list)
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 1999-10-29 13:56 UTC by stevec
Modified: 2014-03-17 02:10 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-11-09 19:51:14 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description stevec 1999-10-29 13:56:16 UTC
An install script we write fails in RH6.1, and not in AIX,
Solaris, RH5.0, or Suse.  The reason is that a

/bin/echo "mytext\n" >> /myfile

command is placing \n in the file rather than a newline.
Recall that this is fine on other platforms.  Another
feature is:

$ echo hello\c
helloc
$ exit

rather than:

$ echo hello\c
hello$ exit

The problem exists in /bin/echo whether run from bash or
tcsh, and in bash's builtin but not in tcsh's builtin.

Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 1999-10-29 15:32:59 UTC
According to the echo manpage, you should add
'-e' to display escapes.

What version of echo is on the SuSe version you mention?

Comment 2 Bill Nottingham 1999-11-08 16:02:59 UTC
Hmm.... looking at the Changelog for sh-utils, it looks like
that the default of *not* interpreting backslash characters
is the POSIX thing to do.

Comment 3 Bill Nottingham 1999-11-09 16:27:59 UTC
*** Bug 6768 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

/bin/echo and echo no longer interpret the newline escape
character embedded in a string. E.G.

TMP="This is some text"
TMP=${TMP}"\nwith a newline in the middle"

/bin/echo ${TMP}

This code work fine in 6.0 and other flavors of unix:

This is some text
with a newline in the middle

but in RH 6.1 this is the output:

This is some text\nwith a newline in the middle

This bug has cost us a lot of time and money! What are you
guys smoking over there?! (sorry)


------- Additional Comments From jcassell  11/08/99 15:16 -------
BTW, I neglected to mention, the bug-like echo behavior is exhibited
in a Bourne shell script - i.e. #!/bin/sh.


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