Re: why not update bash syntax while maintaining backwards compatibility?

[Eric Blake]

On 2/15/19 9:26 AM, Vlad Vladov wrote:
> Hi,
> I think bash is great and more people should use it. However, it has a bit
> more picky syntax than many other modern languages and shell scripts. For
> example assigning a var requires having no spaces between = and var and
> assignment. I think this kind of thing can be fixed while still maintaining
> backwards compatibility since we would only need to accept space (0 or
> more) between tokens. If someone needs to write a script for older systems
> they can just follow a stricter syntax, while others can use the benefits
> of more lenient syntax. What are your thoughts?

Bad idea.  Existing scripts can do:

echo = hi

and your proposal would change the semantics of that line from
outputting the string "= hi" to instead assigning to the variable named
$echo.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

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