From owner-freebsd-standards Sat Oct 26 10:38: 3 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-standards@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29F3F37B401 for ; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 10:38:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thuvia.demon.co.uk (thuvia.demon.co.uk [193.237.34.248]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F305E43E4A for ; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 10:37:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk) Received: from dotar.thuvia.org (dotar.thuvia.org [10.0.0.4]) by phaidor.thuvia.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g9QHbtcF054016; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 18:37:55 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk) Received: from dotar.thuvia.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by dotar.thuvia.org (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id g9QHbsH5010290; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 18:37:54 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from mark@dotar.thuvia.org) Received: (from mark@localhost) by dotar.thuvia.org (8.12.6/8.12.6/Submit) id g9QHbsYS010289; Sat, 26 Oct 2002 18:37:54 +0100 (BST) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 18:37:54 +0100 (BST) From: Mark Valentine Message-Id: <200210261737.g9QHbsYS010289@dotar.thuvia.org> In-Reply-To: <200210261701.g9QH1v14024575@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.6 beta(5) 10/07/98) To: Garrett Wollman Subject: Re: /usr/posix: a first cut Cc: freebsd-standards@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-standards@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > From: Garrett Wollman > Date: Sat 26 Oct, 2002 > Subject: /usr/posix: a first cut > < said: > > > It installs versions of expr(1) and sort(1) there, reverts /bin/expr to > > being BSD-compatible > > I object to re-breaking the base expr. It just so happens the -CURRENT expr(1) breaks a large proportion of the scripts I've written over the last couple of decades, and I can't be alone. I'm pretty sure a release of 5.0 with this expr(1) will find a few more... One of the problems is obviously that I've not kept up with the incompatibilities introduced by POSIX, and believed the manual pages all these years. I was always happy in the erroneous (but practically true) knowledge that expr(1) didn't take any options. However, my main justification for reverting it in favour of /usr/posix/expr is that I haven't seen other vendors make their default expr(1) behave this way. Sun certainly haven't, at least as far as Solaris 9 FCS. The one change I *have* seen to support POSIX.1 is for implementations to silently discard an initial '--', which at least starts a migration path; in fact, I'd suggest we might even do this also in the EXPR_COMPAT case? The ability to set EXPR_COMPAT to deal with this problem is insufficient with respect to third party scripts over which the user has little control. I just find it hard to imagine FreeBSD 5.0 being the first OS release in my knowledge to break traditional expr(1) use. If /usr/posix is useful at all, it's useful for exactly this kind of thing; in fact there's no point having /usr/posix at all if we still break backwards compatibility due to POSIX! Cheers, Mark. -- Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs "Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses "We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-standards" in the body of the message