Re: (was: Portability of shell parameter expansions (${word%pattern} and) friends)?

[Eric Blake]

> Let's start with Autotest.  OK?
> 
> This saves almost 10% execution time on the `Empty test' on Linux.  ;-)
> (but I still owe an apology to Paolo for not finishing his patch first.)

Sweet!  Looks like it will give even better savings on cygwin, where
expr is not builtin, but you are guaranteed to have a decent shell that
can do $(()).  Timing numbers to come later when I'm back home
and can actually test it (I'm on the road this week).

Please apply, since it looked good by inspection.

-- 
Eric Blake