echo rationale?

[Ben Harris <yyyyy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Having been slightly suprised by the change to POSIX "echo" to require
SysV backlash-escapes and disallow options, I'm curious as to the
rationale behind this change.  The official rationale in IEEE 1003.1-2001
only mentions the change in passing, and I couldn't find a mention of it
in the archives of this list.  I did find an aardvark suggesting that the
escapes be taken out again, rejected with a rationale of "the consensus
was to reject the proposed action".

I ask because there's no obvious reason for the change, and it's going to
be difficult to convince the maintainers of existing BSD-derived systems
that making an incompatible change to "echo" is a good idea.  "Because
POSIX says so" isn't likely to be good enough.

-- 
Ben Harris                                                   <yyyyy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Portmaster, NetBSD/acorn26           <URL:http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/acorn26/>