Problem with echo -e in bash 3.2

[Jochen Roderburg]

I found a problem under Linux with the 'Midnight Commander' (v 4.5.55) and the
new bash 3.2.
Chdirs in subshells do not work with the effects:
1) On every directory change in mc you get a warning 'Could not change directory
...'
   mostly corrupting the mc program window.
2) It is not possible to execute programs on files in subdirectories.

I finally tracked this down to a changed behaviour of the builtin echo command.

Namely, the form    echo -e '\nnn'   with a 3-digit octal number does not work
any longer, only the variant  echo -e '\0nnn' with a leading zero.

Don't know it this is a bug or feature  ;-)
I do not find this mentioned in any changelog, only hidden in the builtin help:
Bash 3.1 says:   \num    the character whose ASCII code is NUM (octal)
Bash 3.2 says:   \0nnn   the character whose ASCII code is NNN (octal).
                         NNN can be 0 to 3 octal digits

The 'program' echo from current GNU coreutils interprets the \nnn form
(correctly?).

Jochen Roderburg
ZAIK/RRZK
University of Cologne
Robert-Koch-Str. 10                    Tel.:   +49-221/478-7024
D-50931 Koeln                          E-Mail: Roderburg@Uni-Koeln.DE
Germany