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

["Adam D. Barratt" <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk>]

On Thu, 2009-06-04 at 14:14 +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> Consider this example: the safe "printf" way to do
> echo $BAR
> is
> printf "%s\n" "$BAR"
> 
> (in case BAR hold a value like BAR="%s a")
> So printf is slightly unwiedly to use and it can create
> format string attack.

It does, however, have the advantage of working if BAR contains "-E".
(This isn't a contrived example, it's why I recently changed the parsing
of DEBUILD_LINTIAN_OPTS to use printf rather than echo; if there's  a
sane way of printing "-E" using echo I'd love to know what it is).

Regards,

Adam