On Mon, Dec 11, 2023 at 10:16:35AM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > 1) Many implementations of echo will interpret parts of their argument(s),
> > in addition to processing options like -n. If you want to print a
> > variable's contents to standard output without *any* interpretation,
> > use printf.
> >
> > printf %s "$myvar"
> > printf '%s\n' "$myvar"
>
> Interesting. I used the following instead:
>
> bugit_echo () {
> # POSIX `echo` has all kinds of "features" we don't want, such as
> # handling of \c and -n.
> cat <<ENDDOC
> $*
> ENDDOC
> }
That requires an external command (one fork), plus whatever overhead is
used by the << implementation (temp file or pipe, depending on shell and
version). It's not wrong, but an implementation using nothing but
builtins is usually preferable.
echo() { printf '%s\n' "$*"; }
It's also worth mentioning that both of these rely on the expansion of $*
with a default or nearly-default IFS variable. If you want it to work
when IFS may have been altered, you can do this in bash:
echo() { local IFS=' '; printf '%s\n' "$*"; }
In sh, you'd need to fork a subshell:
echo() { (IFS=' '; printf '%s\n' "$*"); }
Or if you're a golfer:
echo() (IFS=' '; printf '%s\n' "$*")
I *really* dislike that syntax, but that's just me. Some people use it.
