Re: status on $[arith] for eval arith vsl $((arith))??

[Maarten Billemont]

On 09 Apr 2012, at 11:46, Linda Walsh wrote:
> 
> Like it costs how much?  I would **bet** that it cost more code to support 
> (()) than to support [] as arith ops .. so if you want my opinion, lets toss 
> (())...
> (like that'll happen)...

Just thought I'd add that I personally prefer $((...)) mostly because of 
consistency with other syntax.  $ is always an indicator of expansion, and 
since we have (( ... )) to perform an arithmetic evaluation (on its own as a 
statement or in a for etc.), I'm very happy that putting a $ in front of that 
is all it takes to expand the result of it.  Just like putting a dollar in 
front of a subshell construct expands the output of it and putting a dollar in 
front of a parameter name expands the contents of it.

If we were to move to $[ ... ], then to keep that consistency, we'd have to 
change (( ... )) to [ ... ], and it so happens that this command is already 
taken for a different type of test entirely.  (Don't give me the spiel about 
how [...] is already arithmetic evaluation inside array indices, that's a 
different syntax entirely, and perfectly fine - unless you'd prefer to turn it 
into arr[ (( ... )) ], which is rather overkill.)

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