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Re: RFC: use readable $(cmd) syntax instead of unreadable `cmd`



Hello,

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007, Jari Aalto wrote:
> The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
> that has been posted to gmane.linux.debian.devel.general as well.

<a number of reasons skipped>

> BUG REPORTS -- AND REPONSES
> 
> I have reported bugs against backtick and suggested to change to use
> the more readable alternative. The result was surprising. To quote
> one message (bug closed reasoning):
> 
>      "If your development environment cannot display ` differently than ' ,
>      you need to get a new one."
> 
> I'm askinf if it is ok to to reopen such bugs based of better QA
> aspects. Possibly by providing patches if the maintainer is busy
> elsewhere to handle such a "minor issue" from his perspective.

I think most maintainers would consider this a "minor" bug for the
following reasons:
	1. The backtick may already be in upstream code and the
	"minority" of a bug report exponentiates as it travels up
	the stream :-)
	2. The scripts are usually managed by a much smaller
	number of people than those that use them. This means that
	those who need to spot the difference between "'" and "`"
	is small.
	3. It would require a lot of effort to hunt down and fix
	all such instances down in all code in the Debian archive.
	One of the reasons is that the backtick and other "symmetric"
	quotations marks are harder to locate by pattern searches.

However, I believe that if you provide the patch then you have at
least eliminated (3) and made it likelier that (1) can be handled
as well.

Regards,

Kapil.
--

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