From: David Kastrup Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:58:47 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Supplant the "while case ... break ;; esac" idiom Message-ID: <86k5qgtbag.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz> In-Reply-To: <87k5qgrxcu.fsf@catnip.gol.com> Miles Bader writes: > Eygene Ryabinkin writes: >>> The comment "... holds only for a shell where [ is a builtin" doesn't >>> make any sense to me >> >> The 'while case ...' construct does not invoke any external commands. >> The 'while test ...' too, but only when 'test' is builtin. When >> 'test' is the external binary you get one additional fork/exec per >> each cycle. > > In practice that's not an issue though -- every reasonable shell has > test as a builtin these days, so the "works when test is not a builtin" > criteria is really important only for robustness. Since the external test is pretty standardized, "works when test is one of various builtins" is actually more important for robustness... -- David Kastrup