From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Mar  6  0:44: 1 2000
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From: Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
To: Max Khon <fjoe@iclub.nsu.ru>, Doug Barton <Doug@gorean.org>
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: empty lists in for 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 04 Mar 2000 15:36:43 +0200."
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Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 10:41:07 +0200
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On Sat, 04 Mar 2000 15:36:43 +0200, Sheldon Hearn wrote:

> I seem to remember POSIX being ambiguous on this one, but my books
> are at the office.  If you haven't gotten a more conclusive answer by
> Monday, mail me and I'll look it up.

I was wrong about POSIX being ambiguous in this regard; it's SUSV2 which
is ambiguous.  From POSIX.2 3.9.4.2:

	First, the list of words following _in_ shall be expanded to
	generate a list of items.  Then, the variable <name> shall be
	set to each item, in turn, and the <compound-list> executed each
	time.  If no items result from the expansion, the
	<compound-list> shall not be executed. [...]

	Exit Status:  The exit status of a _for_ command shall be the
	exit status of the last command that executes.  If there are no
	items, the exit status shall be zero.

> Neither bash nor ksh claim to be particularly POSIX compliant.  our
> /bin/sh does.

This is the part of my original post that Doug barton objected to.
Perhaps bash has POSIX compliance as one of its goals, which invalidates
my original statement.  On this score, however, both bash and ksh are
not compliant.

Once again, our shell comes out tops. :-)

Ciao,
Sheldong.


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