Re: type -aP: intentional behaviour or a bug?

[Chet Ramey]

On 12/19/22 8:17 PM, Adam Vodopjan wrote:
> On 19/12/2022 18:17, Chet Ramey wrote:
> > On 12/16/22 7:33 PM, Adam Vodopjan wrote:
> >
> > > Bash man page: 'If a command is hashed, -p and -P print the hashed value',
> > > but it says later: 'The table of hashed commands is not consulted when
> > > using -a'.
> >
> > Right, unless -P is supplied to force it.
> >
> > > It looks like a 20 yo bug, or a problem with docs. '-a' states for
> > > 'everything', not for 'everything, if only it is not hashed yet in case of
> > > -P. But with -p it is everything indeed'.
> >
> > Then let's see if we can rationalize the behavior. They have to differ,
> > otherwise there's no reason to have both.
>
> As per type.def, -p vs -P is CDESC_FORCE_PATH flag. With it enabled:

Thanks for the summary of current (bash-5.2) behavior.


> I think the only thing to change is dropping the CDESC_FORCE_PATH
> condition from the hash block. So that it is never entered with -a.

I think something different: keep the same condition, but keep going if
`all' != 0 (-a supplied). -P then gives you the hash table lookup plus
the path search; -p gives you a path search only.

The idea is that you can use -P to skip everything but the first occurrence
in the file system (including existing hash table entries), and -p to get
to the first thing that will be executed, including a hash table entry.

Maybe another change is to allow -ap to search the hash table, if it
gets that far, by changing the flag to CDESC_PATH_ONLY.


--
``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/