Re: feature request: echo --

[Philip Rowlands]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2021, at 18:42, Roger Pack wrote:
> It came to my attention recently that it seems not possible to "echo" the
> string "-e"
> $ echo "-e"

Nitpick: the double quotes aren't doing anything here.

> Perhaps echo could add a "--" style param like
>
> $ echo -- -e

These are both covered by the documentation
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/echo-invocation.html

"... the normally-special argument ‘--’ has no special meaning and is treated 
like any other string."

"If the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, then when echo’s first 
argument is not -n it outputs option-like arguments instead of treating them as 
options."

Thus the way to make this work is:

$ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 /bin/echo -e
-e


Cheers,
Phil