On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:18:44PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote: > Colin Watson wrote: > > Adam Heath wrote: > > > Guido Guenther wrote: > > > > Just of out curiosity, is this in any way different from the shorter: > > > > if [ "$var" ]; then > > > > > > var="-f" > > > > Have you tried that? No POSIX shell will have a problem. > > You are confusing standards with portability. They are not the same > thing. > > See my other posting for a real world example of this particular > construct which fails on a shell on a commercial system which claims > to be a POSIX shell. It probably is compliant to an older version of > the standard. But standards change over time and just by standing > still you fall behind. This particular construct is not portable to > that system regardless of the presence of standards. > > I am not saying that Debian dpkg scripts should worry about strange or > non-standard systems, nor indeed any non-Debian systems at all. I am > just talking about portable script style and advocating defensive > programming in general.
Since I'm talking exclusively about postinst scripts, though, I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn't use cleaner and more understandable POSIX interfaces where they're available. When programming specifically for Debian I do not want to worry about the vagaries of ancient non-free operating systems. Programming to standards is good enough. I'm not confusing standards with portability - I'm aware that certain legacy systems have problems with this construct - but I choose not to care in this instance. Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]