Re: Shell script cleanups/style changes?

From: Uwe Kleine-König <ukleinek@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
Date: Aug 3, 2007, 19:29 UTC
Message-ID: <20070803192942.GA23432@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <86sl72j9vn.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz>

David Kastrup wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Robert Schiele <rschiele@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 12:44:22PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> >> ! 		logfile="${1#-?}"
> >
> > You can't do something like that on /bin/sh on many systems (for
> > instance Solaris).
> 
> Sigh.  It's in Posix.

Well Solaris is (kind of) Posix compliant---you need some extra effort to get it into Posix "mode":

	login@~ > uname -a
	SunOS login 5.10 Generic_125100-10 sun4u sparc
	login@~ > sh
	$ set tralala
	$ echo "${1#tra}"
	lala
	$ ^D

the "problem" here is, that my PATH includes /usr/xpg4/bin before /usr/bin and that's non-standard (for Solaris). That is /usr/xpg4/bin/sh is Posix compliant and /usr/bin/sh is compatible to former versions of Solaris/SunOS and this one doesn't support these substitutions:

	login@~ > /usr/bin/sh
	$ set tralala
	$ echo "${1#tra}"
	bad substitution

Having

	login@~ > ls -l /bin
	lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2006-07-03 09:29 /bin -> ./usr/bin

sadly the Solaris sh is used for shell scripts that use a shebang line calling /bin/sh.

Best regards Uwe

-- 
Uwe Kleine-König

http://www.google.com/search?q=5+choose+3