Subject: RE: bash-2.x
From: [email-masked] (Leo Mauro)

25 Jul 1998 01:36:00 -0700
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On Thursday, July 23, 1998 04:58 AM Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:

> After all this trouble with bash, i downloaded bash-docs-2.02,
> and it says:
> 
>        for name [ in word; ] do list ; done
[SNIP]
> Which means that empy word-list is valid, and shouldn't trigger
> an error.

I agree with your interpretation of the docs, but this is a gray area
and detailed interpretations may differ.  If you try

	x=
	for i in $x; do echo iteration; done

You get what you expect: no iterations.  I think the "for syntax" is
being checked _before_ variable expansion, and then the semantics
expand/glob and then do what they are expected.  Maybe it won't be
too difficult to extend the syntax to handle the explicitly empy word
list case.

> I also saw that bash-2.x is still in beta, internally the versions are 
> called 2.02-beta.  What about 'if you choose to use beta software,
> you suffer?'

This is a fact of life.  At least the program's code is in the open, so
a large population of well-motivated programmers/users can fix
whatever it is they don't like or doesn't work.  I personally find the
frustration of having paid good money for a flawed program is
much worse than the aggravation of (normally minor) flaws in
open-source programs I could fix if I was motivated enough.

> And why is cygnus distributing a beta shell with gnu-windows?

Have you noticed that CygWin32's version number is b19?  The "b"
stands for beta, so caveat emptor.

Leo Mauro
Principal Scientist
TeleSys Technologies, Inc.
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