9.1.4 Warning messages

Setting the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT turns off the following warning and error messages, for strict compliance with POSIX.2. Otherwise, the following diagnostics are issued:

1. When the `--delete' option is given but `--squeeze-repeats' is not, and set2 is given, GNU tr by default prints a usage message and exits, because set2 would not be used. The POSIX specification says that set2 must be ignored in this case. Silently ignoring arguments is a bad idea.

2. When an ambiguous octal escape is given. For example, `\400' is actually `\40' followed by the digit `0', because the value 400 octal does not fit into a single byte.

GNU tr does not provide complete BSD or System V compatibility. For example, it is impossible to disable interpretation of the POSIX constructs `[:alpha:]', `[=c=]', and `[c*10]'. Also, GNU tr does not delete zero bytes automatically, unlike traditional Unix versions, which provide no way to preserve zero bytes.