Re: bug with 'test'

[Eric Blake]

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According to The Wanderer on 12/9/2005 10:25 AM:
> 
> Actually, no; on every single mailing list I've ever been on (unless you
> count those old "string a thousand E-mail addresses together in the Cc:
> field" AOL messes) except for this one and the Enlightenment user list,
> the Reply-To field has been set and so a simple Ctrl-R has been
> sufficient. Regardless of how one may feel about the correctness of a
> mailing list setting Reply-To, I don't think that "usually" applies.

On lists that munge Reply-To, hitting reply-to-all STILL mails the list
(it just doesn't mail anyone else).  If I were you, I would get in the
habit of hitting reply-to-all when replying to a list, regardless of the
list's policy on header munging.  Then, if the list munges the header, it
will go to just the list, but if the list preserves headers, you will not
inadvertantly drop the list from the reply.  The one biggest reason why
bug-coreutils does not munge headers is so that non-subscribers can post
and still see an answer delivered to their own inbox when the person
answering their question did a reply-to-all.

> 
> Hmm. Speaking of echo and its requirements, is there any way to have it
> print '-n', '-e' or '-E' in an instance where they are not preceded on
> the line by anything which is not a recognized option?

Not portably.  The autoconf documentation points out that not all echos
recognize -n, and not all shells recognize the easier-to-use printf
command either.  Ultimately, you have to do a runtime test to determine
which style of echo is supported, or whether printf is supported, before
the rest of a portable script can print arbitrary strings.  Hence scripts
like autoconf and libtool go to great pains to define $ECHO to something
that does the right thing, regardless of the quirks of the shell it is
running in.

But yes, Paul did show you that coreutils echo can be coerced to print any
string by doing '/bin/echo -n "$s$nl"', where $s is the string and $nl is
a newline.  And on systems with printf, 'printf %s\\n "$s"' does the same.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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