On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 5:55 PM, Mike Frysinger <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> I wish bash wouldn't introduce gratuitous standard violations. >> >> > >> >> > bash is its own shell. why can't it introduce its own extensions as it >> >> > sees >> >> > fit ? >> >> >> >> Because a divergence is not a good thing, especially if it's gratuitous >> > >> > this position makes no sense. are you saying that no shell should be >> > allowed >> > to extend the syntax however it wants ? every shell out there should only >> > be >> > allowed to implement POSIX and nothing else ? >> >> The extensions which add some significantly useful functionality are ok. >> Example: arrays. >> >> Changes which don't really add such functionality do more harm than good. >> Example: "function" keyword in bash made it possible to do this: > > in general, i think you're applying 20/20 hindsight to things. it's easy to > say something is a bad idea years after the fact with experience in hand.
The general observation that "compatibility is a good thing and should not be broken just for the fun of it" is very old. It's _good_ when you move your stuff from system to system, from distro to distro, from one OS to another and things not break. Or at least break not too severely. Unfortunately, every new generation of comp-sci students needs to learn it the hard way: by breaking it and then feeling the pain. I still wonder how on Earth Android filesystem ended up not having /bin/sh. No one at Google realized that people are using shell scripts all over the Unix universe? Or they seriously did not want people to run non-Android specific stuff on Android, and *wanted* non-android-tailored shell scripts to fail to execute? _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
