Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> I noticed that the BASH and Korn printf
> built-ins output ESC with printf '\e' but
> the DAsh printf outputs the actual characters.
>
> With printf '%b' '\e' BASH outputs ESC, while
> Korn and DAsh output the characters.

Kornshell's printf man page says \E is ESC.

Janis

>
> I had a look into POSIX. I'm not sure I've
> managed to locate all the relevant sections
> but those I've read do not mention \e as an
> escape sequence which means that using it is
> unspecified behaviour. If I'm right then
> which are the allowed behaviours ?