Mike Kupfer wrote:
>
> >>>>> "April" == April Chin <April.Chin at eng.sun.com> writes:
>
> April> The built-in behavior *may* depend on $PATH, if that built-in is
> April> bound to a pathname. [...] In the default ksh93, getconf is a
> April> standalone built-in, not bound to a path
>
> Ah, I see. What determines whether a built-in is bound to a pathname?
> (Put another way: why are some built-ins bound and others, like getconf,
> not bound?)
Some builtins (like "print", "print" etc.) should be available
regardless how the content of ${PATH} look like or whether there is a
file in the filesystem (normally builtins bound to a path only work when
the matching file is found in the filesystem).
Other builtins aren't bound to a path for performance reasons, for
example you likely do not want to wait the shell to scan each element in
${PATH} when you execute $ sleep 0.01 # since the total time of the
filesystem accesses may exceed the 0.01 seconds.
----
Bye,
Roland
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