Bug#395448: exim4-base: cron script uses "echo -e", which is not recognized by dash

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2006-10-27 Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages at zugschlus.de> wrote:
> tags #395448 confirmed
> thanks

> On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 08:05:25PM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
>> In the /etc/cron.daily/exim4-base script, it uses
>>     echo -e "Subject: exim paniclog...\nTo: root\n..."
>> to send a mail to root about non-empty paniclog.

>> However this seems to only have desired result in bash.  After I set my
>> /bin/sh to dash, I am getting mails about paniclog with empty subject,
>> but "-e Subject: exim paniclog on ..." in the mail body.  Testing with
>> dash confirms that dash doesn't recognize the "-e" option, and just echo
>> it literally.

> Is it acceptable for you to explicitly call /bin/echo instead of the
> echo builtin?

The canonical way to fix issues like this one is to simply use
printf(1) instead of echo.
cu andreas
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