Chronology (was Re: %B%~%b bug in $PROMPT in 3.1.5 ?)

Chronology (was Re: %B%~%b bug in $PROMPT in 3.1.5 ?)

[Bart Schaefer]

On Jan 5,  7:55am, Richard Coleman wrote:
} Subject: Re: %B%~%b bug in $PROMPT in 3.1.5 ?
}
} > Some years ago it became a goal of several of the most active zsh
} > contributors to make zsh capable of acting as a replacement for /bin/sh,
} > and particularly for ksh.  I griped about this repeatedly for some time,
} > but they had the support of the archive maintainer so I eventually gave
} > up and ignored zsh development for a long while.

I've been gently reminded that my chronology is flawed.  I did indeed quit
paying much attention to zsh from late 2.4 to late 2.6, but in reviewing
the situation I find that griping about ksh compatibility changes was what
got me involved again, not what drove me away.

Reviewing a few extremely old email messages, I find that it was setopt
incompatibilities that finally stopped me from using the later 2.4s and
on through 2.5.  Those setopt changes were designed to promote Bourne
shell (not ksh) compatibility, by disabling a number of csh features,
and caused syntax errors in many people's rc files at my site.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Re: Chronology (was Re: %B%~%b bug in $PROMPT in 3.1.5 ?)

[Bruce Stephens]

"Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@brasslantern.com> writes:

> Reviewing a few extremely old email messages, I find that it was
> setopt incompatibilities that finally stopped me from using the
> later 2.4s and on through 2.5.  Those setopt changes were designed
> to promote Bourne shell (not ksh) compatibility, by disabling a
> number of csh features, and caused syntax errors in many people's rc
> files at my site.

Presumably csh incompatibility isn't such an issue nowadays?  I think
Solaris gives ksh as the default, and of course Linux and *BSD people
presumably would choose bash more than csh, so compatibility with ksh
and bash would be more important?

I'm not entirely sure, though.  Most people here seem to use csh or
tcsh, for whatever reason.

Re: Chronology (was Re: %B%~%b bug in $PROMPT in 3.1.5 ?)

[Bart Schaefer]

On Jan 5,  5:17pm, Bruce Stephens wrote:
} Subject: Re: Chronology (was Re: %B%~%b bug in $PROMPT in 3.1.5 ?)
}
} Presumably csh incompatibility isn't such an issue nowadays?

The issue was never csh (in)compatibility.  It was, and continues to be,
functional compatibility with preceding versions of zsh itself.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com