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Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:00:22 +1000
From: TLiddelow@cybec.com.au (Tim Liddelow)
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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.
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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