Re: read -s

[Oliver Kiddle <okiddle@yahoo.co.uk>]

On 15 Aug, you wrote:

> >I expect it would be fairly easy to add this -s option to the read in zsh.
> >Does anyone think it would be worth doing?
> 
>     IMHO the stty solution is cleaner and more portable. BASH is
> bloated with things like those, please don't imitate ;))

Well Peter has already posted a patch for it on -workers though he
hasn't committed it to CVS. The patch isn't big enough to upset me as
being bloat but I can see your point. If it doesn't go in, it might be
a good idea to add the stty trick to the FAQ instead. Incidentally, in
ksh93, the -s option to read adds the line to the history. Not that I'd
suggest copying that particularly because the read can always be
followed by a print -s and because I'd tend to use vared instead of
read in such circumstances anyway.

>From the bash/ksh compatibility perspective, what might be useful would
be to add the -d option to read which both ksh93 and bash have. It lets
you specify a delimiter to stop reading at (instead of newline).

>     For example, bash has a non-POSIX, non-SuSv3 compliant
> implementation of 'printf' builtin, and zsh has one fully compliant,
> and this is applicable to more builtins. The '-s' flag to read is not
> necessary at all. UNIX has this policy (IMHO, again): keep it simple
> and divide the tasks among processes instead of bloating one of them.

Out of interest, in what way is bash's printf non-compliant? Also, zsh
4.0.x does not have a printf builtin. The printf in the 4.1 branch is
compliant to my knowledge but adds a good few features which go beyond
the standards.

Oliver

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