> echo -e '\152' -e \152 > Possible cause - the above was done with the echo command built into tcsh. > If I invoke /bin/echo "\005" then I get \005 printed. So possibly > variations in shells will cause different results.
Exactly. I posted without explanation to make people think about the assumptions they make but never state, and probably aren't consciously aware of. I still use tcsh as interactive shell ([1]), so got quite used to having to adjust things. However, the case of echo is more complicated than just bash and tcsh. Apart from the fact that there are many more shells, there's also a /bin/echo external command, and there may be differing implementations of /bin/echo as well (as there often are in these things). For added entertainment, anyone can take a guess whether "man echo" on their system will show the man page of bash, tcsh, some other shell, or of their particular system's /bin/echo... Btw the behaviour of tcsh's builtin echo also depends on the settings of shell variable(s). Volker [1] Can anyone tell me how bash can be persuaded to backspace until the previous whitespace or "/" when pressing esc-backspace in the cmd line editor? Bash has the annoying habit of backspacing about 2 chars at a time. This, and the mental distortions one has to go through for piping stdout+stderr into something have held me back so far from switching. -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
