select() in sh (POSIX is crap, but something to have anyway :)

[Oleg Verych <!gmane?olecom.ENOMSG@flower.upol.cz>]

07-08-2007, Vincent Lefevre:
[]
> Not every system has bash. If this is for compatibility, you can learn
> POSIX sh, but e.g. Solaris /bin/sh is not a POSIX sh.

And Windows will have `sh` soon, called "Microsoft Suxe Shell" (C) Novell.

> For this reason and because POSIX sh is limited (you can't execute a
> command and have a timeout on it), I now write all my portable scripts
> in Perl since it is on every system I've met.

Yes. Not having select()-like functionality in the most basic tool, like
shell is a very bad mis-design of POSIX and prior art of BSD. As bad as
whole `make` crap, which is accepted non standard feature of

`test ARG1 -nt ARG2`

So, do you need that useless `sh` wrapper called `make` after that? 

Timeouts can be implemented also. Not portably (maybe), but i don't care
about hype of POSIX(R)ability. Here's thread to read (features debian
kernel team member):

<http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2007-September/002167.html>

==
Perl. Perl is XISOP. Whatever, i don't care.
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