Re: Identifying the NetBSD shell

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Mon, 21 Mar 2016 10:28:21 +0100
    From:        Kamil Rytarowski <n54%gmx.com@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <56EFBEB5.7020502%gmx.com@localhost>

  | mksh(1) defines MKSH_VERSION.

That's interesting, they must have changed (relatively recently - as in
within the last year or so) - the version I have defines KSH_VERSION ...

$ echo $KSH_VERSION
@(#)MIRBSD KSH R50 2014/10/07

and not MKSH_VERSION

But it does suggest that the name of the variable may be more important
than its content, as you suggest.

  | I suggest to define SH_VERSION with value "NetBSD".

That might be a little too course, but certainly is a possibility.

  | Precise version
  | (if needed) is retrievable with what(1) and ident(1) (or strings(1)
  | and grep(1) or similar).

And that might be a little too precise - fine when what you want to
know is whether some specific bug is fixed, but if a script wants to
know if it can safely redirect file descriptors >= 10 (answer for NetBSD
right now is definitely no) that is a little difficult to embed in the
script.

  | - From my experience, people mostly detect whether *_VERSION is
  | available, without parsing their values.

I agree.

  | While there, I would reset ksh(1) to "NetBSD" as the current value
  | ("@(#)PD KSH v5.2.14 99/07/13.2") has no meaning.

That would probably be a good idea.   It is certainly kind of dated, and
I am sure that ksh(1) has had some changes/fixes in the past 16 years.

kre

ps: I had an off-list vote for NETBSD_SHELL as the var name.