From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:57:31 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Supplant the "while case ... break ;; esac" idiom
Message-ID: <86ejgowl5g.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz>
In-Reply-To: <ee77f5c20709232330n7b47d9e9v38677678dbf197da@mail.gmail.com>

"David Symonds" <dsymonds@gmail.com> writes:

> On 24/09/2007, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:
>>
>> > On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 10:42:08PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> >> -while case $# in 0) break ;; esac
>> >> +while test $# != 0
>> >
>> > Wouldn't -ne be better ?
>>
>> Why?
>
> Because -ne does a numeric comparison, != does a string comparison,
> and it's a numeric comparison happening, semantically speaking.

I don't see the point in converting $# and 0 into numbers before
comparing them.  "!=" is quite more readable, and the old code also
compared the strings.

-- 
David Kastrup