Re: bash "while do echo" can't function correctly

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 06:49:51AM -0500, John McKown wrote:
> ???Ah. Thanks. I only use BASH and the GNU infrastructure, so I have never
> run into that problem. I think I'll change my habits, just in case I run
> across a system which doesn't have it (especially in my scripts)

Every implementation of echo has *some* input on which it fails,
including bash's implementation.

imadev:~$ type echo
echo is a shell builtin
imadev:~$ x=-n
imadev:~$ echo "$x"
imadev:~$ printf '%s\n' "$x"
-n

You simply hadn't run into any of the failure cases yet.