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From: crs@lanl.gov (Charlie Sorsby)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Serious brain damage in /bin/sh for FreeBSD 2.1.5
Date: 2 Dec 1996 04:32:16 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <57tm4g$kjt@newshost.lanl.gov>
References: <stanbE1M2D2.38I@netcom.com> <57mbf9$jcn@spirit.dynas.se> <stanbE1MvHw.3Hs@netcom.com> <57nr38$q8s@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Reply-To: crs@hamlet.lanl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: hamlet.lanl.gov
In article <57nr38$q8s@uriah.heep.sax.de>,
J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote:
=
= Perhaps it's the shell scripts that need fixing, too? Anyway, you're
= welcome to contribute fixes that make it better behaving like a Posix
= shell. You're not welcome to suggest us removing features that are
= either mandated or allowed by Posix, but might not be expected by
= broken legacy scripts.
It seems to me that, if those "legacy scripts" previously worked
with Bourne shell (before POSIX) then *they* are not broken.
Why must Bourne shell support POSIX extensions? Bourne shell
should, in my opinion, successfully run Bourne-shell scripts that
were correct with previous versions of Bourne shell. If POSIX
compliance does, indeed, break existing, previously correct, Bourne-
shell scripts, it seems to me that it would be sensible to make a
different shell for those who want POSIX compliance and leave
Bourne shell alone.
I'm sorry but it simply does not make sense to me for POSIX
compliance to break previously working scripts.
--
Best,
Charlie "Older than dirt" Sorsby "I'm the NRA!"
crs@swcp.com crs@hamlet.lanl.gov Life Member since 1965