Re: [9fans] bug in echo?

[Pietro Gagliardi <pietro10@mac.com>]

You don't realize the point. I am agreeing with Kernighan and Pike:
cat -v is harmful. So is ls -M, or echo -f, or rm -i. I'm showing a
ludicrous echo command and challenging you to make it effective. What
you'll find is surprising:
1) Maintaining echo is harder than maintaining all of Microsoft
Windows and Microsoft Office combined,
2) That my question and my challenge and my echo were all rhetorical.

Here is my ultimate echo (yours may vary):

NAME
	echo -- echo argumens
SYNOPSIS
	echo [-n] arguments
DESCRIPTION
	echo prints arguments on standard output, followed by newline. If -n
is given, no new line is added.
BUGS
	To print -n and a newline, use
		echo -n '
		'

On Apr 3, 2008, at 6:16 PM, a@9srv.net wrote:

> Is -M the switch for the built-in mail reader?
>
> This is lunacy, or profound ignorance. You're duplicating
> functionality from about a half dozen other places in here,
> perhaps most significantly the shell. The software tools
> model gets its profound power from using simple tools
> which do one thing well and can be combined in arbitrary
> ways. Your... whatever... does lots of arbitrary things,
> while not actually doing much of anything for the user.
>
> If this is the "ultimate" echo, I fear for what "something
> cool" might be. I don't think my health could take it.
> Anthony
>
>