S6-LINUX-INIT-ECHO(1)

NAME
s6-linux-init-echo - writes arguments to stdout

SYNOPSIS
s6-linux-init-echo [-n] [-s sep] args...

DESCRIPTION
s6-linux-init-echo writes its arguments args to stdout, separated with spaces.

Strange, and appalling, as it may seem for such a simple task, there is no way to ensure that the ‘echo’ program will behave consistently from Unix system to Unix system — and even from Linux distribution to Linux distribution. Despite there being a standard[1] for it, the ‘echo’ commands in GNU coreutils, busybox, toybox, sbase, and other implementations basically all exhibit different behaviours. Every shell has a built-in ‘echo’ command, that fails to follow the POSIX standard. ‘echo’ is the prime example of the consequences of the blatant disregard of early Unices for cross-system compatibility, and its followup as a turf war between GNU and the rest of the Linux world. As a distribution-agnostic software developer, it is ironically impossible to rely on a definite behaviour of the ‘echo’ command on every supported system, and that is why s6-linux-init provides its own implementation. Fortunately, it is very easy to do so, with minimal overhead.

This command is an exact duplicate of the s6-echo(1) command provided in the s6-portable-utils package. It was decided not to have a dependency from s6-linux-init to s6-portable-utils: that dependency would arguably be a higher cost than the small amount of code duplication.

OPTIONS

-n  Do not output a trailing newline.

-s sep
    Separate arguments with the sep character instead of a space.

EXIT STATUS

0   Success.

100 Permanent error ( such as a misuse).

111 Temporary error ( such as a system call failure).

SEE ALSO
s6-linux-init-overview(7), s6-linux-init-quickstart(7), s6-linux-init-why(7), s6-linux-init(8), s6-linux-init-hpr(8), s6-linux-init-logouthookd(8), s6-linux-init-maker(8), s6-linux-init-nuke(8), s6-linux-init-shutdown(8), s6-linux-init-shutdownd(8), s6-linux-init-telinit(8), s6-linux-init-umountall(8)

[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/echo.html

This man page is ported from the authoritative documentation at: https://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/s6-linux-init-echo.html

AUTHORS
Laurent Bercot Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com> (man page port)