On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Martin Husemann wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 10:13:31PM +0200, Alan Barrett wrote:
> > Can we solve this problem without adding more special cases to build.sh
> > by just adding backslashes in appropriate places, so it doesn't matter
> > whether or not the shell does brace expansion?
> 
> Doesn't this mean this shell is broken from a posix point of view

Yes, I think so, but I thought we could work around it.  I was wrong.

> and with your change build.sh should fail on a strictly confirming
> shell?

I don't know what POSIX says, but all the shells I tested failed.

> IIUC in this case the rules for double quotes apply:
> 
>   The backslash shall retain its special meaning as an escape character [..]
>   only when followed by one of the following characters when considered
>   special:
> 
>        $   `   "   \   <newline>

The sh(1) man page says

     the text is subjected to parameter expansion, command substitution,
     and arithmetic expansion (as described in the section on
     ``Expansions'').

without mentioning anything about backslashes.  But testing several shells
available to me shows that they all treat \{ literally.  So my idea won't
work in practice, regardless of what POSIX says.

--apb (Alan Barrett)