From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: schily@schily.net (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 11:25:34 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Shell control through external commands
In-Reply-To: <1bjMiH-10N-00@marmaro.de>
References: <201607151647.u6FGlqvW037575@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
 <20160910174011.GF5970@dnied%tiscali.it>
 <201609101922.u8AJMmtq024477@freefriends.org>
 <1bjMiH-10N-00@marmaro.de>
Message-ID: <57d6748e.CNiWgn0QxOuugldp%schily@schily.net>

markus schnalke <meillo at marmaro.de> wrote:

> I think I've seen many eary (pre-Shebang and even pre-#-comment)
> shell scripts start with a colon. Is this only a coincidence with
> having a comment at the beginning or was the colon character magic
> in some way?

The colon was introduced by AT&T around 1983. It was used for Bourne Shell 
scripts. Some of these scripts made it into SVr4 and caused problems with 
non-Bourne compatible other shells.

Jörg

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