echo command always prints its arguments
Ray Lubinsky
rwl at uvacs.UUCP
Sat Apr 13 14:25:07 AEST 1985
> >Shouldn't this be in net.jokes? If echo didn't print its arguments,
> >what good would it be?!? I mean, what else does your version do?
> >Can you give me an example of how you would use your `-q' option?
>
> Ok....
>
> echo -q This creates an empty file >new.file
>
> Since, with csh, there is no longer an easy way to create an empty
> file. (With sh one could type just ">new.file").
>
---
A few people have mentioned just using cp /dev/null new.file but of course
this only works for one file at a time. I've had a script around for a while
called "wipe" that will create an arbitrary number of zero-length files:
#! /bin/sh
exec /bin/tee $* < /dev/null
[BTW, I hadn't looked at the date of the original posting, either. I must
have been reading it before my morning's coffee because I can remember
puzzling for a good 30 seconds over why you'd want an echo that didn't print
its arguments. :-)]
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Ray Lubinsky University of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science
uucp: decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!rwl
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