From owner-freebsd-current  Sun Nov  1 08:56:50 1998
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From: "John W. DeBoskey" <jwd@unx.sas.com>
Message-Id: <199811011656.LAA14169@bb01f39.unx.sas.com>
Subject: Re: Changing sh for compatibility sake
In-Reply-To: From Brian Feldman at "Oct 27, 98 07:31:15 am"
To: green@zone.syracuse.net (Brian Feldman)
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 11:56:31 -0500 (EST)
Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
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Hi,

   I sent mail to this list a few months ago... pdksh doesn't run
the tail-end of a pipe in the current shell environment, thus the
following doesn't work as expected:

export FOUND=0
ls | wc -l | while read fcnt; do
   export FOUND=$fcnt
done
echo $FOUND

   So, the comment below might need a slight modification to say
which scripts don't break...  :-)

Thanks!
John

> Let me repeat this once more: not a SINGLE script breaks with pdksh!
> 
> Brian Feldman
> 
> On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
> 
> > Chuck wrote:
> > >I'm sorry, that's not true.  Ask anyone who writes shell scripts that
> > >install software (or perform any necessarily portable function) across
> > >multiple platforms.  sh is the shell to use ONLY BECAUSE it's the lowest
> > >common denominator.  Why else would they use the dumbest shell?
> > 
> > I've written numerous system/install sh scripts.  But it's not to
> > one specific implementation, its many.  It seems like every OS
> > has it's own variant of sh.  I do not know of any version of sh
> > that can reliable used as a golden target sh.  Each and very
> > implementation of sh has its quirks that have to be dealt with.
> > FreeBSD sh definitely has its, as do the others.  
> > 
> > Any change will likely cause problems in some existing scripts.
> > Also, any change will cause developers to deal with additional
> > portability issues.  This is life.  Most multiple platform sh
> > developers have already adapted to specific quicks of popular
> > sh implementations.  Changing from one to another should not
> > be that big of a deal.  I suspect a few FreeBSD-only sh scripts
> > will choke.
> > 
> > Don't change sh for compatibility sake, our scripts are already
> > compatible!  Do change for functionality sake, we'll adapt as
> > necessary.
> > 
> > Kurt
> > 
> > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
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> > 
> 
> 
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> ------------------------------
> 


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