Re: [PATCH] Supplant the "while case ... break ;; esac" idiom

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Sep 24, 2007, 14:04 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0709241502330.28395@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <87k5qgrxcu.fsf@catnip.gol.com>

Hi,

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, Miles Bader wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Eygene Ryabinkin <rea-git@codelabs.ru> 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.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

_Exactly_ the same reasoning can be said about the old code: _every_ reasonable shell can grok the code that used to be there!

<rhetoric-question>
	So what exactly was your point again?
</rhetoric-question>

Ciao, Dscho