On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 4:56 PM Chet Ramey wrote: > On 1/6/20 4:29 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Mon, 6 Jan 2020, arnold@skeeve.com wrote: > > > >> Would anyone who uses Bash regularly, both interactively and > >> for scripting, really want to go back to using the V7 sh > >> for production work? > > > > I have never used all the fancy stuff in BASH such as the arithmetic > > functions; I still use "expr" etc for portability. > > Portability to what? The POSIX $((...)) arithmetic expansion is widely > implemented and near-universally available. > > Some of the other things are more esoteric, but you should be able to > increase your expectation to POSIX features and still be sufficiently > portable. > Huh. I've been in this "use the old stuff for portability" camp for some time, but now that you mention it....I can't think of any systems I use that require resorting to old-style shell-isms. What an interesting epiphany. It reminds me of the time when first I realized that continuing to write K&R-style C was no longer necessary, as everything that I used had an ANSI-compatible compiler and supported function prototypes. Seeing backticks in the rearview mirror is a welcome change. - Dan C.