Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> wrote: > Yes, on this one. There are others; recall the `discussion' about > whether bash should choose between /dev/fd or FIFOs for process > substitution at runtime.
That's a tougher one. It's a question of how far back do you wish to continue supporting systems? I'm finding that modern systems have pretty much the union of things that I need, and also that the older ones that don't simply aren't in use anymore. E.g., do you still need to support SunOS 4.1.x? Ultrix? OSF/1? Irix? I removed a lot of crufty code in gawk ~3 years ago to zero complaints. You might be able to do that in Bash (e.g., assume /dev/fd), especially if you do it a major release point (Bash 5.0). Again, my two cents' worth. And I understand that gawk doesn't make the same demands of the OS that Bash does. HTH, Arnold