On 08/01/2012 07:49 AM, Jari Vuoksenranta wrote: > Would it break anything if "*" was replaced with a "x" (on command line ONLY)? > I mostly use expr in such easy div / mul tasks...
I suppose such an extension would be okay, however, how would you reliably know whether you have a new enough coreutils providing the extension, when you might as well just stick with the syntax standardized by POSIX? > > "expr (GNU coreutils) 8.15 Packaged by Cygwin (8.15-1)" Furthermore, why are you using 'expr' in the first place? Spawning a new process is expensive, and it is much faster to use shell built-in arithmetic (also guaranteed by POSIX and present on cygwin). Change your script from: expr 3 \* 4 to echo $((3 * 4)) for faster execution, and so that you no longer have to escape the *, all without proposing any changes to expr. -- Eric Blake [email protected] +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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