Re: cvs build prob

[Paul Eggert]

"Gary V. Vaughan" <address@hidden> writes:

> it appears that pdksh is confused over what the posix behaviour should
> be :-(

Yup.  That part of the POSIX spec is confusing, but if you look in 2.2.2
<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html#tag_02_02>
it says

  The portion of the quoted string from the initial backquote and the
  characters up to the next backquote that is not preceded by a
  backslash, having escape characters removed, defines that command
  whose output replaces "`...`"

Here "escape characters" means

   backslashes followed by $, `, ", \, or newline

and hence "`echo \"hi\"`" is evaluated by running the command

  echo "hi"

not

  echo \"hi\"

So pdksh is incorrect here when it is running in POSIX mode.

Pdksh seems to be relatively unmaintained now.  Can whoever is using
it in this thread (sorry, I've lost track) please file a bug report
with whoever's in charge of his copy?  It's clearly broken.