Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-Id: <200312292019.hBTKJaqd017550@guild.plethora.net>
From: seebs AT plethora DOT net (Peter Seebach)
Reply-To: seebs AT plethora DOT net (Peter Seebach)
To: Cygwin List <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Question about ash and getopts
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:12:23 EST." <6.0.1.1.0.20031229150250.03bb6d28@127.0.0.1>
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:19:36 -0600
X-IsSubscribed: yes

In message <6 DOT 0 DOT 1 DOT 1 DOT 0 DOT 20031229150250 DOT 03bb6d28 AT 127 DOT 0 DOT 0 DOT 1>, Larry Hall writes:
>OK, sounds to me like you've convinced yourself that ash should contain 
>getopts.  Does that mean that you no longer have a need to keep this thread 
>going?  I'm not sure I see the discussion providing any useful benefit beyond
>you becoming more comfortable with your original position.  If I'm wrong,
>please show us where you're headed.  If not and your main goal was to just 
>point out that ash doesn't have getopts, then let's end the thread.  There's 
>little point to covering the same ground on this topic again. 

The goal here is that I would like Cygwin to be the best environment it could
be, since I use it, and I sometimes want to recommend such an environment to
people, and I dislike having to say "it's very much like Unix, except that
standard POSIX shell scripts that have worked on every Unix system anywhere
since the late 80's won't run on it".

In short, I think this mistake should be recognized as just that - a mistaken
devotion to the Little Tin God - and corrected.  Then Cygwin will be one
obvious step closer to POSIX compliance, and there will no longer be periodic
repititions of the question "why doesn't my POSIX-compliant shell script
work with this /bin/sh", followed quickly by the question "why did someone
put special effort into breaking it".

This has already made its way into a book as an example of false efficiency.

-s

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/