Florent Flament wrote: > Out of curiosity, would it possible to have the `echo` command output > the string "-n" ? > > ``` > $ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 /bin/echo -n > ```
But the standards do actually mention -n. The behavior you see with POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 is conforming behavior. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/echo.html#tag_20_37 If the first operand is -n, or if any of the operands contain a <backslash> character, the results are implementation-defined. Unix v7 echo accepted -n as an option and did not print it. Same with BSD. It is too late to mess with it now. On a practical level why is it an issue at all? If there is any concern about printing -n then use 'printf' as that is a much better solution for arbitrary strings. Also note that most shells include 'echo' as a builtin command which will be different from the coreutils standalone executable. Most users should look to their shell for their echo implementation instead. Bob