Re: /bin/sh diversions

[Oleg Verych <for.gmane@flower.upol.cz>]

02-08-2007, Peter Samuelson:
>
> [Pierre Habouzit]
>>   the 3 biggest problems I've seen are:
>>=20
>>   * [[ for test, trivial: add it as a test alias, and also check for ]]
>>     termination in the test.c builtin.
>
> Ummm, [[ is not the same as [.  (If they were the same, there would
> have been no need to invent [[.)  They behave quite differently with
> regard to argument quoting.  Try this in bash:
>
>   unset foo
>   [ -n $foo ] && echo foo is non-empty
>   [[ -n $foo ]] && echo foo is non-empty
>
> As you can see, only the second one works.

Not quoting possible empty argument is a script writing bug. It's like
dereferencing NULL pointer and must be shot away also. Supporting
buggy scripting by inventing new tools is struggling with consequences
not cause and is a very bad idea.

BTW, i've provided patch in the BTS for dash's test built-in to have
arithmetic checking of an empty argument and zero right. This was nearly
a month ago, yet nothing happened. (Flaming about dash is easy,
maintaining is not :)
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