[PATCH] Ash support for replace and subsitution

[Paul Fox]

denys wrote:
 > On Monday 24 March 2008 20:16, James Simmons wrote:
 > > 
 > > What is the goal for ash? That I don't know.
 > 
 > From the practical point-of-view, bbox need standard-compliant shell.
 > ash is (trying to be) such a shell. (Other two shells are far behind,
 > but they are much smaller, and work on NOMMU!)
 > 
 > Above standard-compliance, bbox needs a shell which emulates bash.
 > This is purely from practucal point-of-view: most Linux installations use
 > bash as the primary shell => most scripts are written for bash
 > (when they use non-standard bash-isms).

ubuntu has shown very successfully that /bin/sh _not_ be bash, so i
think it's very possible to design most systems (esp.  embedded)
not to need those features.

 > 
 > Trivial bashism example: "function" keyword.

exactly.  trivial.  delete it.  :-)

 > 
 > Bashisms in ash can be guarded by ENABLE_FEATURE_BASH_COMPAT,
 > in order to make standard lawyer-esque people happier.

if you're worried (and i know you are) that ash is already too big
and complicated and bug-ridden, then i think we'd be well-served
by limiting its feature set.  change "can" to "must" and i'll be
happier.

 > 
 > > > But I could be wrong.  For example, the extended test notation [[ ... ]]
 > > > is not POSIX, but (according to your patch; I haven't checked it myself)
 > > > it's already supported.

i have to confess that i think i applied the patch that implemented [[ and ]].
someone on the list sent it in, and it seemed pretty harmless, so i put
it in.  not much thought went into it.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at brightstareng.com