Hi, I am using GNU coreutils 8.5 (I know it is not the newest, thanks Debian) and found an issue regarding the handling of newline characters.
If I type the command '/usr/bin/printf "hi\b"', the result is as expected -- "h" without a newline character. However, if I type '/usr/bin/printf "hi\b\n"', the result is "hi" followed by a newline. The newline character seems to force a buffer flush without respecting what precedes it. The behavior is the same no matter what precedes the backspace character and the number of backspace characters -- try "a\b\b\n". Now testing the same strings using the C version of printf (libc6 2.11.2), I get the same result. As such, I am wondering if it is the result of a bug in the terminal driver; sorry to bother, I discovered it using. I tested with bash, dash, konsole, xterm and a linux console with the same results. By the way, I get the same behavior using "/bin/echo -e" with and without the -n flag". Thank you for your work! Philippe
