David Korn wrote:
In my opinion, a better solution would be to adopt a mechanism
that was introduced by ksh93 is used by several other existing shells
such bash and zsh and is compatible with the current POSIX standard
so that no strictly conforming application could break.
The idea is to add literal string constants of the form $'...'
A few real-world examples might help better define what this quote syntax
will accomplish. Same with new escape sequences. I have not personally
seen much call for either, though their potential for creating
incompatibilities is clear. Accordingly, my question would be whether
POSIX should be considering these features in the first place?
The key issue with /bin/sh is not functionality. Developers needing an
extensive list of functions/methods use formal scripting languages such as
Python, Ruby and Perl rather than /bin/sh. Is there any disagreement that
the single most important feature of /bin/sh is not the feature count,
but compatibility (backwards and cross-platform)? As such shouldn't KISS
be the guiding principle?
A meta issue are the stakeholder groups: 1) developers, and 2) end-users,
generally systems administrators. This proposal and others we've seen
recently indicate an imbalance, with the end-users being underrepresented.
Roger Marquis
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