Re: issues in bash found while creating command result display

[Chet Ramey]

On 4/16/19 7:37 PM, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Tue, 2019-04-16 at 14:57 -0400, Chet Ramey wrote:
> 
>> Why take so much effort to (imperfectly) figure out and display
>> things you already know?
> 
> Correctness. If what the user knows doesn't match what the program
> knows then they might think that the program is buggy 

OK, let's explore that a little.

1. The user types ^C, and knows he typed it.

2. The shell sets $? to 130 (128+SIGINT) to note that a command was
   interrupted during parsing.

3. The user types ^C, and knows he typed it.

4. The shell sets $? to 130 for the same reason.

Compare that to

1. The user types ^C, and knows he typed it.

2. The shell sets $? to 130 (128+SIGINT) to note that a command was
   interrupted during parsing.

3. The user types RET, and knows he typed it.

4. The shell doesn't change $?, since no command was executed to change it.


What is the `correctness' rationale to change this? Why should the shell
modify well-understood rules? The user knows what he did, and should know
the consequences of those actions on what the shell exposes externally.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

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