Re: expr shouldn't use spaces

[Mike Hodson]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2022 at 2:52 PM David Chmelik <davidnchmelik@gmail.com>
wrote:

> In this case /POSIX/ has the new/fancy syntax breaking millennia
> tradition... I understand POSIX should be followed, but because of this,
> now I don't trust them on virtually anything, and many tools are
> extended/configurable to do more than what POSIX does, which I don't see
> what would be wrong with that.
>
> POSIX was simply the codification of similarities and differences in
commercial UNIX implementations, starting from what everyone had uniquely
come up with at first, to try and come to a common ground of "things that
work similarly enough so that there isn't a huge porting effort involved".
At least, that's my interpretation what I understand of the POSIX goals.

That said, POSIX did not create the syntax you are so miffed by, they only
documented what existed already, and laid out what syntax for such CLI
utility was compatible with existing implementations.

AT&T Unix V7 was where 'expr' was initially released. Perhaps you should
direct your dismay toward 1970s era Bell Labs engineers?

Mike