[ On Friday, June 14, 2002 at 12:33:32 (+0100), Ben Harris wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: discrepency beteen /bin/echo and builtin echo of /bin/sh
>
> In article <20020614031102.464FBAC@proven.weird.com> you write:
> >[ On Friday, June 14, 2002 at 01:09:35 (+0100), Ben Harris wrote: ]
> >> Subject: Re: discrepency beteen /bin/echo and builtin echo of /bin/sh
> >>
> >> I didn't want a concrete demonstration.
> >
> >If my demonstration giving very clearly unambigious results didn't
> >answer the question then I'm not going to be able to help you out here
> >-- that's the very best I can do without getting into wars about what
> >the words mean.
> 
> Of course it didn't answer my question, because my questions were precisely
> about the meanings of words (or rather, a particular instance of their
> meanings).

If you can't discern the answers to your question(s) inherently in my
demonstration of the commands then I just have to ask:  Do you not know
what "echo" does?  Have you not tried any real-world implementations to
compare them with what I demonstrated?  Did you not read the survey of
real-world implementations posted to this thread (by David Laight, IIRC)?

>  If you aren't willing to answer,

I am literally not able to give a better answer than I have already
given repeatedly.  My demonstration was as concrete an expression of my
interpretation of the various standards as was possible within the
context of your question.


> then I can't hope to explain to
> you why I think that 1003.2-1992's specification of echo is partially
> redundant, and hence why I think it might not express the intentions of its
> authors.

OK, so you've gone from describing the original 1003.2 definition of
"echo" as ambiguous to now just describing it as redundant in some
unspecified way and you're now also hinting that it may not express the
intentions of its authors.  I'm not one of its authors.  I didn't
discuss whether or not any part of the definition is redundant.  I don't
care about redundancies in the definition.  I don't care what intentions
the original authors had since they gave full latitude to write a fully
conforming implementation that's also pragmatic and practical (as I've
described).  Why don't you ask one of the original authors directly
whether or not _YOUR_ interpretation matches their intentions?

(I'm just happy that, by implication of your words above, you no longer
find any ambiguity in the original 1003.2 specification for "echo")

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods@acm.org>;  <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;  <woods@robohack.ca>
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