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Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 14:45:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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To: Harti Brandt <harti@freebsd.org>
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cc: FreeBSD Standards <freebsd-standards@freebsd.org>
cc: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
Subject: Re: /bin/test asdf -ge 0
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<<On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 16:46:14 +0200 (CEST), Harti Brandt <harti@freebsd.org> said:


> I just checked the TC1 of Posix and it doesn't say anything in the 
> description of test about this. Also the 'utility argument syntax' section 
> talks only about range errors of numeric operands in point 6. So the 
> behaviour seems to be unspecified. It's not clear whether this is an
> oversight or intended.

I agree.  I believe that an interpretation request would receive the
"the standard is silent and no conformance distinction can be made"
(and therefore FreeBSD's implementation is not incorrect).  It's
instructive to contrast the description of expr(1), where the standard
makes it very clear what constitutes a number.

-GAWollman