IMNSHO.On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, at 9:41am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> Not unless the documented behavior is otherwise... this behavior is the >> normal, expected behavior of bourne-derivative shells. > > Is it that the bourne shell exhibited this seemingly buggy behavior and > bash maintained it for the sake of portability, or was this some kind of > "feature" of the original bourne shell?
Both. :-) The original Bourne shell did it this way, so everything since inherited it. IMNSHO, Bash breaks compatibility in so many ways that adding one more to the list (i.e., check for and skip empty PATH components, possibly with a "set" option to re-enable the old behavior) wouldn't be such a big deal. But it ain't my call. :-) Knowing the way life works, I'm sure there are people who "do this all the time" and "never had any trouble". Heck, just the other day, in another forum, I got into a discussion with someone who has always used "0" instead of "127.0.0.1" (because it was easier to type). Apparently, this actually works with an astounding amount of software, due to the way the IP stack gets implemented in many systems. However, it's not in any standard that I know of, and it was causing a problem with some software he was trying to run, but he "never had any trouble" before. *sigh* -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
