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Message-ID: <19991111022216.A12691@ba.best.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 02:22:16 -0500
From: Glenn Spell <glenn AT gs DOT fay DOT nc DOT us>
To: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Subject: /bin/sh (Was: getopts problem)
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In-Reply-To: <19991110160540.A15242@cygnus.com>; from "Chris Faylor" on Wed, Nov 10, 1999 at 04:05PM
Organization: the aerie

On 10 Nov 1999 around 4:05PM (-0500) Chris Faylor wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 10, 1999 at 02:35:36AM -0500, Glenn Spell wrote:
>
> >Another solution is:
> >
> >    <http://www.fay.nc.us/~glenn/cygwin/sh.exe.gz>
>
> Of course most UNIX implementations of /bin/sh do not have a
> builtin 'getopts' implementation.

I didn't know that.

> I'd like to request that you add some way of identifying your
> version of ash so that it will be obvious what somebody's using.
> Otherwise I foresee confusion on the cygwin mailing list.

Sure, no problem... except, I'm not a programmer and I don't know
right off hand how to go about doing that. Any suggestions?

I can also post the source (next week) if that'd help... or I can
take it back down if you'd like.

> >Frankly, I believe /bin/sh should be the "system" shell for
> >Cygwin, just as it is for FreeBSD and NetBSD. In fact, I only
> >joined the developers list when Chris posted "Just say no to
> >ash"... I intended to start hollering and screaming... but before
> >I got my information together, he changed his mind.
>
> Actually, I posted it as a question and asked for feedback, as I
> usually do with these things.

Sorry, my remarks above were "embellished". I thought that would be
obvious. :-(

> I don't recall you providing any feedback but I could be mistaken.

I did not. I was searching all over for opinions and data and trying
to correlate the info found into something cohesive... and before I
got prepared, the window of opportunity had passed... so I went on to
other things.

Oh yea... I didn't give any immediate feedback from personal
knowledge simply because I'm not personally knowledgable about the
relevant issues (but I am good at forming opinions :-).

> >When it comes to an open source posix compatible Bourne type
> >shell, ash is as good as it gets.  (Anyone ever try running a
> >miminally configed bash in posix mode calling it as "sh".  No
> >thank you, at least...  not on Cygwin.)
>
> Except that I don't believe that ash actually *is* Posix compatible

The maintainer of the Debian port seems to think it is. The tests I
ran on ash with the bash tests "seemed" to indicate that it might
be. It was hard for me to rewrite the bash tests and remove the
"bashisms" so I gave up on it. Also, I downloaded the test stuff from
NIST but couldn't figure out how to use it. :-)

In other words, you may be right... I really don't know.

But then again, I believe there are some very knowledgable folks
involved with FreeBSD and NetBSD and these people seem to have no
problem at all with ash being the system shell.

> and it's not really that robust.  It is riddled with small buffers
> which are easy to overrun, causing random errors.

Interesting. Again, I'm not at all knowledgable about that kind of
stuff. Perhaps others will share more thoughts on this.

-glenn

-- 
  ________________________________________      _       _____
 )                                        )_ _ (__\____o /_/_ |
 )    Glenn Spell <glenn AT gs DOT fay DOT nc DOT us>    )     >-----._/_/__]>
 )________________________________________)               `0  |

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