Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:00:22 +1000 From: TLiddelow@cybec.com.au (Tim Liddelow) To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>, freebsd-bugs@hub.freebsd.org Subject: Re: bin/4154: wish /bin/sleep handled fractions of a second. Message-ID: <33D7EC96.12F89534@cybec.com.au> References: <11276.869735517@time.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > Erm, you're sorta missing the point. This is not about upwards > compatibility - this is about taking a BSD script and later trying to > port it to, say, Solaris. Portability cuts both ways, and there's no > advantage to be gained by turning BSD into a roach motel, where code > can get in but, once "BSD-ized", never leave again. > > In this particular case, if you have a script which says something > like: > > foo > sleep 0.8 > bar > sleep 0.9 > baz > > And you bring it to a non-BSD system, it will not sleep _at all_ since > the other system sees "sleep 0", and that could be bad depending on > what bar and baz do. This is exactly the kind of interoperability > problem that POSIX was intended to try and solve. Let's not fight it. > I do see your point. As an avid FreeBSD user and hacker, I want to see compatibility and I push this in my travels. What I should have said is that perhaps if you want or need extra features you need to somehow push standards bodies (pipe dream?) or write a portable shell work-around. Cheers Tim. > Jordan
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