Re: test vs. [ [was: Bash script problem]
On Thu, Aug 05, 2021 at 01:59:06PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 05, 2021 at 07:19:11AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > The external versions of test and [ need to exist for POSIX conformance,
> > and also so that you can -exec them from find(1) or other similar
> > programs.
>
> I see. Do we still (seriously) care about POSIX (don't get me wrong: I'd
> strongly prefer a world where we did!).
Depends on who you mean by "we". There are a bunch of people who do
care, and a bunch of people who don't.
I'd say the Debian developers who package things like coreutils care,
at least to a certain degree. They won't go to extreme lengths to be
POSIX compatible, but they'll mostly try to do so if it doesn't break
anything or cause an unreasonable burden.
A bigger issue is that certain packages which *should* be present for
POSIX compatibility are simply not installed by default -- specifically,
pax and ed come to mind. I don't know who made the decision that
these packages would be "optional" instead of "standard", but it leaves
significant holes in what would otherwise be a fairly POSIX-compliant
operating system.
Then again, users who care about having POSIX-compliant systems can
simply install the extra packages they need, once they learn that they
have this option. Maybe Debian believes that the small savings in
disk space and bandwidth outweighs the merits of being closer to POSIX
compatibility, since so few end users actually care about the latter.
I can't say which decision is the better one.
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