From owner-freebsd-current Mon Oct 26 16:38:36 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA15196 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Mon, 26 Oct 1998 16:38:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from zone.syracuse.net (zone.syracuse.net [205.232.47.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA15171 for ; Mon, 26 Oct 1998 16:38:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from green@zone.syracuse.net) Received: from localhost (green@localhost) by zone.syracuse.net (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id TAA28001; Mon, 26 Oct 1998 19:37:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 19:37:34 -0500 (EST) From: Brian Feldman To: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Changing sh for compatibility sake In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981026163758.009dd550@localhost> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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