bash - echo "-e" doesn't print anything

Question

I'm using GNU bash, version 3.00.15(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu). And this command:

echo "-e" 

doesn't print anything. I guess this is because "-e" is one of a valid options of echo command because echo "-n" and echo "-E" (the other two options) also produce empty strings.

The question is how to escape the sequence "-e" for echo to get the natural output ("-e").

Answer 1

The one true way to print any arbitrary string:

printf "%s" "$vars"