Re: sh compatibility question

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Pavel" == Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> writes:

Pavel> Hello, Akim!
>> You may fall on some lonely hermit who decided plain old
>> functionless sh was enough for him, but then 1. he is certainly not
>> interested in your scripts, or 2. if he wants them, let him install
>> bash.

Pavel> One important point - bash used a configure script produced by
Pavel> Autoconf.

Definitely, that's the only reason why Autoconf must continue,
otherwise, there is just no point.  It is ridiculous to spend 80% of
our time to adjust configure for 1% of machines.  In this case
configure should just start by displaying.

        Wow!  My poor fellow!  The state of your computer is
        desperate.  I'd suggest using a big ax, since this is known to
        be excellent for computer scientist nerves.

        Nevertheless, if you can't afford a new ax, rest assured: GNU
        bash is for you, and shall bring some happiness in your dark
        life.

        Until then, me, configure, shall not assist you in your
        depression: either get a cure by changing your computer, or by
        changing the software you run.  I won't caution such an
        environment.




>> Nobody but Autoconf and Libtool maintainers should ever bother with
>> non POSIX shell portability issues.  That's an absolute waste of
>> time for a totally uninteresting issue (Gosh, how I'd love not to
>> have the brain encumbered with references to *bugs*).

Pavel> Shell functions are unimplemented features, not bugs.

Right, I was also referring to the other `traditional' bugs.  For
instance the "$@" expanding to "" when $# = 0 has been known for
years, and DU still has it.  Today's scripts still have to deal with
this horror.



Pavel> If you ever looked at projects like Elix
Pavel> (http://sources.redhat.com/elix/) that specify multi-tier API's
Pavel> you should know the difference.

I'll look at it to try to understand your sentence :)