[mruts]

Such an insane default. Currently programming a bittorrent client and was edited files to test some functionality. Was confused for a long time until I realized nano was turning my "echo 'this is a test' > test" into "echo 'this is a test\n' > test"

[nemetroid]

Running "echo 'this is a test' > test" produces a file with a newline at the end.

[lexicality]

Pretty sure nano was changing your code to

    echo 'this is a test' > test\n

and then echo was adding the newline because you didn't specify -n.

[pushpop]

...and also

  echo 'this is a test\n'

doesn't produce an additional new line because -e wasn't specified.

[symlinkk]

Funny you mention echo, which prints a newline by default as well.