Bug#490605: debian-policy: please discourage the usage of echo -n, and echo in general

[Raphael Geissert <atomo64@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday 02 June 2009 12:54:00 Bill Allombert wrote:
[...]
>
> It does not make sense to policy to discourage "echo -n". Policy
> could deprecate it in favor of something else, but I do not see
> any alternative mentioned in this bug report, and otherwise
> discouraging "echo -n" would amount to discourage shell scripts to display
> lines that does not end by a newline, while Policy 9.4. mandates that init
> scripts display "Starting foo" without an ending newline.
> Furthermore, adding vague recommendation to policy is a waste of resource.
>
> So, is there an alternative to "echo -n" that you would like to recommends,
> and are you willing to do the job to make sure that all "Debian
> sh"-compliant shells in Debian support it ?

Yes, printf.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphael Geissert - Debian Maintainer
www.debian.org - get.debian.net