Re: RFC: init.sh: reject dash, due to its surprising local V='...' semantics

[Pádraig Brady]

On 06/08/16 21:02, Jim Meyering wrote:
> I was burned by dash's local V=' x' semantics, in spite of having
> reported and studied this wart, at length, a few years ago. This arose
> again when Assaf discovered one of grep's test programs would
> malfunction on dash-based shells, e.g., on most Debian systems:
> https://bugs.gnu.org/24116#11
> 
> I don't want to have to debug or think about this again -- at least
> not in the free-software test scripts that I tend -- so propose to
> make init.sh's initial shell-triage stage (where it tries to find a
> useful shell, i.e., one that supports '$(...)', local and a few other
> features) reject any shell like dash with this unfortunate and subtly
> misleading attribute.
> 
> While currently dash cannot be said to be nonconforming, this
> interpretation (thanks, Eric) suggests that the behavior of bash and
> zsh is what will be standardized, so dash should change sooner rather
> than later:
> 
> http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=351
> 
> In the mean time, I feel more than justified in making our tests avoid dash.
> 
> If no one objects, I'll push this in a couple of days.

Wow, yes I agree, that's very confusing behavior.
Do you need an `|| exit 1` in the patch.
It's good that dash will be auto included again
once it fixes that behavior.

thanks,
Pádraig