I have asked this on StackOverflow but thought I should mirror it here, if it is indeed a bug then hopefully SQLite maintainers will see it.

StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79502089/sqlite3-echo-does-not-echo-dot-commands-supplied-on-the-command-line

I will copy the question contents here:

When I run sqlite3 interactively with the -echo option, every command I type gets echoed before its output, as expected:

$ sqlite3 -echo database.db
SQLite version 3.45.1 2024-01-30 16:01:20
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> SELECT * FROM stuff;
SELECT * FROM stuff;
apples|67
tissues|10
sqlite> .tables
.tables
stuff
sqlite> .exit

However, when the commands are specified in the commandline arguments, SQL queries get echoed but dot commands do not:

$ sqlite3 -echo database.db "SELECT * FROM stuff;" ".tables"
SELECT * FROM stuff;
apples|67
tissues|10
stuff

Notice that .tables did not get echoed.

1. Why is this?
2. Is there a way to make dot commands supplied in the command line get echoed as well?

In my opinion this is a bug (different behaviour between commandline and stdin), and seems to be because commandline commands are not run by the same code that runs stdin commands:

  // line 13,480 or so of shell.c

  if( !readStdin ){
    /* Run all arguments that do not begin with '-' as if they were separate
    ** command-line inputs, except for the argToSkip argument which contains
    ** the database filename.
    */
    for(i=0; i<nCmd; i++){
      if( azCmd[i][0]=='.' ){
        // !!!!! missing call to echo_group_input here !!!!!
        rc = do_meta_command(azCmd[i], &data);
        if( rc ){
          if( rc==2 ) rc = 0;
          goto shell_main_exit;
        }
      }else{
        // ...