New Oddity with ECHO command

[Jay Sage]

What is going on here? The first command ends with the ampersand; the second one has a space after it (and produces the expected result.

TCC(30.00.22): C:\>echo &
The process ID is 20296

TCC(30.00.22): C:\>echo &
ECHO is OFF

I discovered this while using SETDOS to turn off multiple command processing so that I could echo the ampersand character.

TCC(30.00.22): C:\>setdos /x-56

TCC(30.00.22): C:\>echo &
The process ID is 19236

The problem occurs only when the ampersand is the last character on the line and has no characters other than space before it.

TCC(30.00.22): C:\>echo .&
.&

Does anyone else see this, or is something messed up on my computer? It feels like something new, but I don't know why I would have entered the command echo & before.

 

[vefatica]

See the help for DETACH.

 

[Jay Sage]

Thank you, Vince! I'm not a Unix user, so this did not come to mind.