Re: POSIX shell; bash ash pdksh & /bin/sh
Hi,
>>"Chris" == Chris Ulrich <cdulrich@ucdavis.edu> writes:
Chris> My final thought on the subject, though, is that so long as /bin/sh
Chris> allows bashisms, unix youngsters who cut their teeth on linux will grow
Chris> up learning many bad habits; daily I curse bashisms when I try to port
Chris> scripts from the linux world to the real unix world at my day
Chris> job.
Debian is trying to create a "real world" distribution. I
would say Linux is rapidly getting more real worl than Digital UNIX,
for example.
Chris> When new hires come onto the scene from the linux world, they
Chris> often have terrible difficulty with using the Bourne shell of
Chris> solaris or digital unix, which lack the features even of the
Chris> posix shell, let alone bash.
Broken shells in Solaris or digital UNIX are only of passing
interest to me, and I definitely am not going to pander to them. (Not
that you said tha; I just want to make my position clear).
Debian is in not in the business of teaching people how to
write scripts for other OS's, at the cost of getting more
fault-intolerant, and breaking with Linux tradition.
Chris> I would be most happy with a policy that makes /bin/sh a strictly
Chris> posix shell that yelps when it sees any ksh or bashism, but
Chris> that allows users to change to bash with the warning
I object. I would prefer a policy that retains the backward
compatibility, and allows people to change to any shell they wish. (I
would gleefully allow people to change /bin/sh to be csh; their
machine; they can do whatever they wish).
Chris> While it is a good goal of a browser to read any random garbage and
Chris> keep on trooping, I am not sure I would want to use a C compiler that
Chris> has the standard behavior of allowing extensions or syntax errors
Chris> because then I won't catch when I write something non-portable. It's
Chris> nice to have the flags to make it more lenient, but I think it's
Chris> improper default behavior because it encourages sloppiness.
Then what compiler do you use, pray? gcc and egcs are not ansi
c compiler without the -ansi -pedantic flags.
Conformance to rtaditional behaviour on Debian systems,
conformance to common practice on Linux systems, fault tolerance, the
fact that bash is essential, and we should not force yet another
command interpreter on people unless they ask for it. Reasons to
leave things as Guy has set up for the next release of bash.
manoj
--
Not in the sky, nor in the depths of the sea, nor hiding in the cleft
of the rocks, there is no place on earth where one can take one's
stand to escape from an evil deed. 127
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: