On 09/06/16 22:14, Evan Gates wrote: >> This is sometimes true, but printf is not safe as well from that point >> > of view, >> > as it's a builtin as well in most shells. > It's not about builtin vs external, it's about surprises. Whether > printf if builtin or not, it will behave in a predictable way. Doing > > var=-n > printf %s\\n "$var" > echo "$var" > > printf will always give us the same result, echo may or may not > depending on shell and system. > >> > In scripts where you just need to output text, or to easily list files, >> > echo is >> > fine. >> > >> > echo * >> > echo /path/*/whatever/*sh # that is better and faster than "ls" >> > echo "I'm right" > And if you have a file named -n or -e? Don't get me wrong, echo has a > place, and interactive shell is is definitely one of those places. But > doing this in a script should be avoided. > Good point about file expansion, still I don't see nothing bad in using echo
for just text and to add blank lines. As a wider response, maybe, just propose your patches of existing suckless scripts and maybe propose a patch to split the coding_style suckless page in two separated pages, one for C and one for shell. For what it's worth, I'm with you and I can help out. Let's see what the master have to say.
