Re: Dashes in function names: Undocumented?

[Eli Schwartz]

On 8/12/20 10:51 AM, Matthew Persico wrote:
> I put a bug report into an emacs group because the bash syntax highlighter
> failed to recognize functions whose names have dashes in them.
> 
> The maintainer came back with this:
> 
> I can reproduce this behaviour, but is it really a bug? Aren't the
> names with '-' invalid?
> The Bash Reference Manual says:
> name
>  A word consisting solely of letters, numbers, and underscores, and
>  beginning with a letter or underscore. Names are used as shell
>  variable and function names. Also referred to as an identifier.
> https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash.html
> 
> I looked at the manual and I didn't see positive or negative
> acknowledgement that dashes can be used in function names. But it does work.
> 
> Update to manual?

The bash-20191127 snapshot updated the manpage documentation for a
function definition (to align with reality). It is now defined as:

function fname [()] compound-command [redirection]

and includes the description:

When in posix mode, fname must be a valid shell name and may not be the
name of one of the POSIX special builtins. In default mode, a function
name can be any unquoted shell word that does not contain $.

For context:

word  -  A sequence of characters considered as a single unit by the
shell. Also known as a token.

name  -  A word consisting only of alphanumeric characters and
underscores, and beginning with an alphabetic character or an
underscore. Also referred to as an identifier.


> name
>  A word consisting solely of letters, numbers, and underscores, and
>  beginning with a letter or underscore. Names are used as shell
>  variables. Also referred to as an identifier.
> 
> function name
>  A word consisting solely of letters, numbers, underscores, dashes, and
>  beginning with a letter or underscore. Function names are used to label
> shell
>  functions.
> 


-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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