I recently noticed that the examples in the softraid man page
 http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=softraid
contain many lines such as
 echo "d a\na\n\n\n\nRAID\nw\nq\n" | disklabel -E wd1
Of course, not every version of echo interprets "\n" as a newline.  In

fact, /bin/echo treats "\n" as a literal backslash followed by a literal

n.  The version of echo that is built into csh also interprets it as a

literal backslash followed by a literal n.  But the softraid man page

certainly intends it to be interpreted as a newline.
So, is the man page in error?  Or are the examples in man pages only

intended for use in the default shell?  (Note that ksh is the default

shell, and ksh has a built-in echo command that interprets "\n" as a

newline.)

On Jan 26, 2008 7:11 PM, Matthew Szudzik <mszudzik@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
Sounds like it should use printf(1) instead of echo(1), as that does

have consistent behavior between shells (and platforms).
Philip

well, the man page is not exactly in error - it just presupposes the use

of the default shell. unfortunately /bin/echo does not support character

sequences such as "\n", even though they are noted as mandated by XSI.

bummer.
marco: can we use printf(1) instead? i think we'd need an extra "\n" (no

idea why):
	echo "d a\na\n\n\n\nRAID\nw\nq\n"

would become:

	printf "d a\na\n\n\n\nRAID\nw\nq\n\n"
we'd maybe need to replace all echo commands with printf. it would at

least be more portable.
jmc

so i've just made this change...

jmc

sure.