After commenting on this thread I remembered a text on echo that Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike wrote in their book The UNIX Programming Environment called A digression on echo.


The single option -n is not like other options in other utilities.
For example, while most utilities use getopt(3) to get the options, echo(1) should not use it, since a gotten option could be an argument to be echoed. See how OpenBSD implement echo, for example:


Other than -n, modern echo implementations also add a new complexity: the C-like backslash sequences like '\n' and '\t'. Some echo implementations (such as OpenBSD's) just ignore them, but some (such as Bash built-in) don't. Here is another digression on echo about this very topic, by Doug Mcllroy, best known for proposing the UNIX pipelines and creating several UNIX tools:


There is, however, another utility that does not print newlines when not asked for and that does interpret C-like backslash sequences: printf(1)

PS: I don't know the right forum to post it. I posted it here in the Philosophy forum since I think that the question on bloatedness and feature creep are related to UNIX Philosophy.