Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 19:37:34 -0500 (EST) From: Brian Feldman <green@zone.syracuse.net> To: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.Org> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Changing sh for compatibility sake Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9810261934020.27863-100000@zone.syracuse.net> In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981026163758.009dd550@localhost>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
See my reply to Terry's questions. Pdksh is a better Bourne shell, AKA the Korn shell (albeit a very good clone). It has SIGNIFICANT feature improvements, and has a smaller a. space b. memory footprint. It will improve compatibility with Korn scripts. Imagine /bin/sh being linked to /bin/ksh. Now there's some _real_ disk space savings. Oh, and if I'm not mistaken, ksh would allow us to remove -lalias from the boot.flp. Brian Feldman On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote: > FreeBSD sh is not the lowest common denominator. Neither is bash. > Neither is pdsh. Neither is ksh or whatever your favorite shell is. > They are all factors of the lowest common denominator. > > Changing FreeBSD sh to something else will: > 1) not improve the portability of existing scripts. In fact, > the change can only decrease portability of existing scripts. > > 2) not change the lowest common denominator for script > developers. That is, FreeBSD sh will still be in use and, > hence, will still be a factor. Even if the target is > just FreeBSD, both old and new shells would be factors. > This change can only add new factors to the lowest > common denominator. > > Changing the sh for compatibility sake does not make much sense. > If you are going to change sh, do it for functionality sake... just > make sure the functionality gain is worth the resulting portability > losses. > > Kurt > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.05.9810261934020.27863-100000>