Re: [bug-grep] bashism in egrep

[Bob Proulx]

Han Boetes wrote:
> egrep contains a bashism:
> 
>   #!/bin/sh
>   exec grep -E ${1+"$@"}

There is no bash specific syntax there.  That will run on even very
old shells predating bash.

> with zsh as the sh implementation you'll get:
> egrep 'blah blah' /dev/null
> egrep: no such file or directory: blah

Then zsh is not suitable as a /bin/sh replacement.  Please use a
better implementation.  A number of shells are suitable for use as
/bin/sh including GNU bash and BSD sh (a.k.a. ash).

> Possibly
>   #!/bin/sh
>   exec grep -E "$@"
> is a better solution.

That fails to handle empty arguments properly on many legacy systems.

Bob