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Re: [PATCH] latest ash has broken 'echo' command



* Herbert Xu said:

> > No, the issue is what behavior Debian systems (and other operating
> > systems based on the Linux kernel) expect "echo" to have.  Judging
> > from the comments from the LSB list (and I think it's safe to assume
> 
> They only care about the shell, not shell scripts.  I presume they are going
> to stick with what POSIX.2 says, which is that no portable script should use
> options.  If they are actually going to mandate -e/-n, i.e., break POSIX.2,
> then it would be a completely different matter.
You still seem to put the equal sign between what the shell supports and the
scripts interpreted by the shell. The shell is *your* product, the script is
somebody *else's* - both of you make decisions based on a) standard, b)
common practice, d) environment the product is intended for. a) is POSIX
which allows for -n/-e, b) requires the two switches to be present for a
huge base of scripts to work, d) Debian/GNU Linux supports the switches in
each and every shell in the distribution - you mustn't break the status quo,
and the environment for a sake of strict compliance with a required part of
the standard which otherwise allows the variations to exist.

> > Now, if ash is not going to be compliant with LSB, and behave
> > differently from other Bourne-compatible shells, then we should not
> > use ash as an alternative for the standard Bourne-compatible shell
> > (/bin/sh).  OTOH, since it's pretty obviously trivial to make ash an
> > acceptable alternative (by allowing and acting on the switches), there
> > is no good reason not to do so.
> 
> Our policy currently requires #!/bin/sh scripts to be POSIX compliant.  If
> you don't like it, then get it changed.  But when that is done, it will be no
> longer possible use anything other than bash as /bin/sh.
But scripts using -n *are* POSIX compliant *if* they account for the
possibility that the argument might not be implemented in some shell. 
 
marek

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