Is there a detailed manual for busybox's ash?

Yann E. MORIN yann.morin.1998 at free.fr
Mon Jun 25 21:27:12 UTC 2012


Walter,

On Monday 25 June 2012 20:36:50 Walter Dnes wrote:
>   I've got automount (and auto-unmount) working with mdev.  Right now,
> the code is in a bash script.  It's intended for use in Gentoo linux.
> But I could see others being interested in it.  For maximum portability,
> I figure that the script should be in busybox ash.  I.e., if you've got
> busybox mdev, you have busybox, and therefore busybox ash.  I can
> imagine that some lightweight systems would try to avoid having another
> shell like bash.
> 
>   I'd like to re-do the automount script in ash, but I don't have any
> idea where to find detailed busybox ash syntax documentation.  A Google
> search for busybox ash documentation turns up... a whole bunch of other
> people asking where to find detailed busybox ash syntax documentation<G>
> 
>   Any pointers?

ash implements (at least) a POSIX shell. POSIX is defined there:
  http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/toc.htm

The page specific to the shell is:
  http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/toc.htm

The page specific to the shell language is:
  http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18

In any case, I now only use POSIX constructs for shell scripts I intend to
be portable, and/or to be 'embedded'. This (somewhat) guarantees that I can
run the scripts on my desktop machine, and on my embedded system(s), without
having to care about the actual shell ( heck, no, I do not care about csh or
zsh, or any non POSIX-compliant shells :-] )

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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