Re: Non-POSIX shells

[Tom Tromey <tromey redhat com>]

>>>>> "Dave" == Drazen Kacar <dave willfork com> writes:

Dave> The problem is that writing portable shell scripts is a black
Dave> art. You can do it sucessfully if you test on a lot of systems.

I think it has gotten less black in recent years.  For instance the
autoconf manual now includes a section on how to write a portable sh
script.  That's an important step forward.

Dave> So if a script works in bash it won't necessarily work in
Dave> ksh. Figuring out if a script uses only POSIX constructs (and if
Dave> all invoked utilities use POSIX constructs) involves testing on
Dave> different systems. I don't know a way around that.

If there was a free shell with a very strict portability mode, that
would help.  I don't know of one though :-(

Tom
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