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Re: [PATCH] latest ash has broken 'echo' command



* Herbert Xu said:

> > > If you mean they use ash as /bin/sh and rely on features that are not
> > > part of POSIX, they are on their own.
> > 
> > echo -n is an optional part of POSIX.  The POSIX committee clearly
> > intends that systems continue to support echo -n or backslash escape
> > codes to support their legacy software.
> 
> If they did they would've made it mandatory.
Not quite so. I understand that optional parts of the standard fall into two
categories: a) features considered as rarely needed, therefore possibly
bloating the implementation, b) features that are not supported by *all*
implementations of the given standard, therefore made optional to allow for
the co-existence of both full, and partial implementations.
 
> > Your desire to break this is not justified by the POSIX standard.
> 
> OK, let me spell it out to you again.  ash only exists on Debian to serve as
> an alternative /bin/sh.  That's only possible if all #!/bin/sh scripts were
> restircted by some standard.  That standard happens to be POSIX.2, which
> currently forbids the use of *any* options in shell scripts because it does
> not require them in shells.
You keep repeating this argument, but so far you haven't presented us the
relevant fragment of the standard that specifically forbids the behavior.
 
> True, exiting for -n is probably within the parameters.  But remember we're
> trying to catch -e as well.
-e is not even in half that common as -n, so it's not a big deal to get rid
of all the -e's from the scripts that actually use it.
 
marek

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