The original answer, on superuser, which was deleted by the moderation, was altered by a system bug. When I started to add my second answer, the system said "Are you sure? Don't you want to edit your original answer?". I told it "no, I want a new answer". But, -- the bug -- it went ahead and slammed my input over the original answer. When I saw what it had done, I again tried to post a new answer. This time it didn't prompt me about updating my 1st one, and went ahead and created an additional answer as I desired.

@Ben Again, you're shooting from the hip. Didn't I say "My answer was deleted by a mod, and I used the "contact moderator" button on the answer to request clarification" while I was talking about the original posting in superuser, long before I opened this specific query on meta? Again, the problem is that I tried, on superuser, to contact a moderator and received no response.

I have learned that that I was not singled out; the anti-spam rules just make it impossible for EVERY new person to quickly get involved.

@david Again, go back and CAREFULLY reread the original question. The OP wasn't asking how to make echo leave only 1 track. They said that the problem was that using echo left 2 tracks, and they only wanted one. In particular, the used the Latin abbreviation "e.g." means EXAMPLE and then sited the echo command. At no time did they REQUIRE that echo be used. The fixation on echo by the reviewers seems an obsession.

Lord know how pedantic I must become. The post had a "code" section with two examples, each an assignment statement. There is no multi-step program involved here. The answer to "not have two virtually duplicate lines printed" involves no redirection, no setting/resetting shell options, no command lists, nothing fancier than doing a single assignment. How much explanation is required to say "just do an assignment, instead of an echo?"