shell script implementation of man

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 18:01 +0100, Yann E. MORIN wrote:
> Do not forget that back-ticks are not POSIX, while $() is.

Uh... what?!?!  That's absolutely not true.  Backticks are
unquestionably defined in the POSIX sh definition.  They are not marked
as "old" or "deprecated" or anything similar.

It's easier to nest command substitutions with $() and there is a very
slight difference in handling backslashes, but otherwise there is no
difference between them.

> Even bash considers the use of back-ticks (backquotes) to
> be /old-style/.

They don't mean it in a pejorative sense.  They just mean it as a
description: it _IS_ old-style.  But that doesn't make backticks wrong
or bad or to be avoided.  Full quote:

        When the old-style backquote form of substitution is used, ...

> I'd say that such shell scripts should be POSIX compliant. That sure
> rules out non-POSIX shells, but is standards-compliant.

Since `` is perfectly standards-compliant AND it's far more portable
than $(), I don't see any reason to avoid `` except as a matter of
style.