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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!purdue!haven.umd.edu!news.ums.edu!news.umbc.edu!eff!news.duke.edu!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.nic.surfnet.nl!surfnet.nl!swsbe6.switch.ch!swidir.switch.ch!in2p3.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!dsi.unimi.it!news.IT.net!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!lade.news.pipex.net!pipex!dsbc.icl.co.uk!dickens.bra01.ic l.co.uk!ejr From: ejr@dickens.bra01.icl.co.uk (Ed Randall) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: /bin/sh isn't Bourne shell Date: 31 Jan 1996 16:56:50 GMT Organization: ICL, Bracknell, UK Lines: 56 Message-ID: <4eo70i$o7j@eccles.dsbc.icl.co.uk> References: <4ekrik$rlf@eccles.dsbc.icl.co.uk> <xcdensholio.fsf@woodlawn.uchicago.edu> <4enl74$ifr@eccles.dsbc.icl.co.uk> <DM1x4C.GML@deshaw.com> Reply-To: E.J.Randall@bra0126.wins.icl.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: dickens.bra01.icl.co.uk X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Christos Zoulas (christos@deshaw.com) wrote: : In article <4enl74$ifr@eccles.dsbc.icl.co.uk> E.J.Randall@bra0126.wins.icl.co.uk writes: : > ...[deleted]... : > : >Read the man page on sh(1); Search for "ENV" and "alias". Those words are : >there, I don't think they should be ! : Well, they need to be there if sh(1) is to be POSIX compliant. : >What is the /bin/sh that comes with 2.1.0-R by default ? : It is ash. But it has been modified by CSRG to be almost POSIX compliant. 'Scuse my ignorance, but who or what is "CSRG" ? : >How do I disable the extended "features" in it ? : You should not. From the purist point of view and the least suprise principle, : yes, the Bourne shell should be the old SVR3 Bourne shell. On the other hand, : if your system is trying to be POSIX compliant, it needs a shell that has : those features you are trying to eliminate. Er, that's very nice and kind of you "purists", but no thanks. Is this a case of "the standards are more important than the installed base" where in this case, the installed base is any shell script with "#!/bin/sh" at the top, where "/bin/sh" means Bourne shell, and includes your very own "MAKEDEV" script, distributed with the aforementioned 2.1.0-R ? What has been achieved by making "/bin/sh" POSIX compliant ? Incompatibility any pre-existing shell scripts which work with all major vendors' flavours of U**X. Maybe that's why HP ships a POSIX-compliant shell as /bin/posix-sh (or something similar, can't remember the exact name) and leaves /bin/sh as good ole' Bourne shell. Or are you now going to tell me that the POSIX specification says that "root" must use "/bin/csh" as the default (i.e. like it installs) ??! Ugh no thanks ! Forget about the pdksh problem which showed this up in the first place; If you make root's login shell /bin/sh on a FreeBSD-2.1.0-R system, and use short aliases such as "j" or "l", you are going to find that things break. And the "MAKEDEV" script is one of the first. Does "ash" behave like a proper Bourne shell without the "CSRG" modifications ? If so, can someone give me a URL to it ? If not, can someone give me a URL to something else that does ? I've got better things to do than fool around at this level, that's why I junked Linux a year ago. Regards, Ed