On Wed, 25 Jun 2008, David Korn wrote:
Whether the change is in the shell or in printf, implementations
must change.
No disputing that :-) but it's the type of change that should concern POSIX
members because A) this would introduce an incompatibility which, B) would
result in application failures.
There is great benefit to compatibility, not just across Unix/Linux
versions but also across time. The benefit is largest when these OSs are
compared to other OS. When fundamental tools such as bin/sh break it
reflects poorly on all Unix/Linux versions and applications.
Stepping back a level, and IMO, this really should be a policy decision
rather than a bin/sh decision. A POSIX policy or guidelines on acceptable
types of change and their consequences would be more useful both now and in
the future, to developers and end-users. Such policies would also be more
efficient than piecemeal decisions regarding new features which may or may
not see much actual use, and regardless of recently introduced "existing
practice".
Roger Marquis
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