When running a bash script on ubuntu 9.10, I get different behavior from bash echo's "-e" option depending on whether or not I'm running as root. Consider this script: $ cat echo-test if [ "`whoami`" = "root" ]; then echo "Running as root" fi echo Testing /bin/echo -e /bin/echo -e "foo\nbar" echo Testing bash echo -e echo -e "foo\nbar" When run as non-root user, I see this output: $ ./echo-test Testing /bin/echo -e foo bar Testing bash echo -e foo bar When run as root, I see this output: $ sudo ./echo-test Running as root Testing /bin/echo -e foo bar Testing bash echo -e -e foo bar Notice the "-e" being echoed in the last case ("-e foo" instead of "foo" on the second-to-last line). When running a script as root, the echo command runs as if "-e" was given and, if -e is given, the option itself is echoed. I can understand some subtle differences in behavior between /bin/echo and bash echo, but I would expect bash echo to behave the same no matter which user invokes it. Anyone know why this is the case? Is this a bug in bash echo? FYI -- I'm running GNU bash, version 4.0.33(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)