Re: abysmal check-portability speed

[tlaronde%kergis.com@localhost]

On Thu, Sep 26, 2024 at 06:25:02PM +0200, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> (using a different eMail address; hopefully, this time,
> the Ccs come through)
> 
> On Wed, 25 Sep 2024, tlaronde%kergis.com@localhost wrote:
> 
> >Bash man page:
> 
> GNU bash is not the measure of all things. I kept a 2.05b
> around at the time I wrote this, but I do not generally look
> into how other shells do things other than for naming (which
> is how mksh has $BASHPID, and zsh?s $EPOCHREALTIME).

We are not taking bash as a reference. But since we are not the first
in the game, instead of providing a version once more different from
all the others, we are simply trying to look at what is more
frequently used and with what semantics and trying to provide
something clearly defined and providing mainly what the option seems
to be used for.

All in all, I would be inclined to have a '-n' behaving the way it
seems it is generally used in scripts in the wide (due to the
predominance of bash and of GNU autoconf, the sample is biased),
and add a '-R' option meaning '-r' + "don't consider the delimiter
at all" + "don't split by IFS" (i.e. one could combine -n with
-r or -R, to have "variants" and, in the latter case, really reading
"raw" this number of bytes---but erroring if a nul byte is encountered).

But it needs some careful consideration since, once it is "published",
very soon, you have to keep it, even if you judge afterwards that your
initial choice was not optimal.

The one programming the thing will, as always, decide.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ kergis +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
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