Re: BASH and POSIX

[Sven Mascheck]

Chet Ramey <chet@nike.ins.cwru.edu> wrote:
>> What i was always interested in:  Why keep bash specific features at all,
>> when being in _POSIX mode_?  The "danger" is that poeple still program bash
>> scripts then (although POSIX scripts certainly always can be run by bash).
>> Neither the FAQ nor POSIX.NOTES answer this.

> POSIX.2 is minimal enough to be almost useless.
> Would you like to sacrifice emacs editing mode, for example?

Certainly not at all.  (i am not after the "interactive user interface" :)

But i meant programming, the shell language itself.
I meant the bash scripting ``extensions'' (from POSIX'
point of view), kept in POSIX mode.

The people using bash allday will be tempted to use bash extensions
without intention then.  And it's hard to avoid such by just looking
at POSIX.2--if you ever have one.  And proper shell programming is
a hard task already anyway.

Wouldn't it be really useful to support also programming in POSIX,
while being in a "POSIX mode", not just accepting POSIX scripts?

Certainly, there's no strong need for this, but as bash is aiming
at POSIX so much already, why giving such an advantage away?
bash is already famous among the free shells for it's good support
of the POSIX mode.

It's about compatibility again, not about where POSIX might make
100% sense and where less (and the situation with POSIX.2 is not
that bad at all in contrast to other POSIX versions).

Sven