Re: A fix for the F3 /var/log bug... / POSIX and '##'

[Alfie Costa <agcosta gmx net>]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003 11:58, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:

> that's wrong reasoning. the claim that a shell is posix-compliant does
> not imply that it does not contain non-posix extensions.

Maybe we do not agree on our terms, and if that is so then this would be 
a usage question.

The HP-UX text quoted did say "conform to" rather than 'complaint'...

"This shell is intended to conform to the shell specification of the 
POSIX.2 Shell and Utility standards."

To me 'conform' means to NOT color outside the lines, as it were, and 
then to stop the work right there.  Whereas there is a tolerant usage 
now current, in which 'conform' means to color inside the lines, but if 
you want to doodle in the margins that's OK, because nobody said you 
couldn't -- I'd use 'comply' for that, but some folks like to make 
'conform' and 'comply' synonyms.

For example, from 'man bash':  "Bash  is  intended  to be a conformant 
implementation of the IEEE POSIX Shell..."  I'd prefer that they say 
it's a 'compliant' shell, not a 'conformant' one, because Bash adds so 
many extensions.

> i have doubts about this. every system today has a posix shell. but
> not necessarily /bin/sh. the reasoning is to keep scripts from the
> stone age (that rely on behaviour that contradicts posix) working.

Egad.  Why can't all these scripts call the old shell under some other 
name, like '/bin/oldsh'?  First you'd run a script to find all scripts 
older than X days, and change their first lines to call the old shell.