BSD_ECHO

BSD_ECHO

[Zefram]

|+ #ifdef SH_USE_BSD_ECHO
|      {"bsdecho", 		0,    0,    OPT_EMULATE|OPT_SH},
|+ #else
|+     {"bsdecho", 		0,    0,    0},
|+ #endif

There are two problems with this.  Firstly, BSD_ECHO should have the
OPT_EMULATE flag, regardless of its default state.  Secondly, as I've
said before, it's a really bad idea to try to emulate the native sh --
on some OSes, such as the one I'm using here, the results of the
configure test depend on what the installer's $PATH is set to.  I
suggest you revert this patch for the final final 3.0 release, or at
least add the OPT_EMULATE flag to the second case.

-zefram

Re: Final 3.0.0 test release

[Richard Coleman]

> } I've put together the final 3.0.0 release but before I release it I'd like
> } some other people to try it.
> 
> I still object to having a configure test for the default behavior of
> BSD_ECHO when run as "sh".  This should NOT be something that varies
> from one installation to the next!
> 
> For one thing, people who already have an older version of zsh linked
> to sh will end up with the same (possibly wrong) behavior that they had
> before.
> 
> For another, it breaks the whole notion of being able to rely on the
> consistent behavior of the shell following "emulate -R ...".

I completely agree...

The options for zsh when called as sh, should not depend on
your current configuration.  It is especially bad for us sysadmins
who work on heterogenous environments.... I don't want zsh working
one way on one machine, and another way on another machine.

One of the reasons people install third party shells is to get
consistency across their various platforms.

rc

Re: BSD_ECHO

[Zoltan Hidvegi]

Richard wrote:
[...]
> > I still object to having a configure test for the default behavior of
> > BSD_ECHO when run as "sh".  This should NOT be something that varies
> > from one installation to the next!
[...]
> I completely agree...
> 
> The options for zsh when called as sh, should not depend on
> your current configuration.  It is especially bad for us sysadmins
> who work on heterogenous environments.... I don't want zsh working
> one way on one machine, and another way on another machine.

Seing the big opposition I'll remove that configure check.  However this
was not a completely unreasonable change.  I use zsh as /bin/sh on Linux
where the default /bin/sh is bash.  I bet that without BSD_ECHO some
scripts will break.

On the other hand someone else reported that on an other system zsh broke
some scripts because of BSD_ECHO.  It is possible to turn on BSD_ECHO iff
zsh is invoked as /bin/sh (with full pathname) and configure detected that
/bin/sh use BSD_ECHO but it would not be set by emulate or alternatively is
would be always set or unset by emulate.  On systems where zsh is installed
as /bin/sh the system administrator probably knows enough about how to set
the desired default and others won't be affected by this change.

I know that prefect solution is not possible.  Even POSIX did not dare to
define the default echo behaviour.  If one wants to write a portable script
it must begin with something like #! /usr/local/bin/zsh -f.  We have 7
different OS'es in an NFS/NIS network where zsh is very useful as portable
script language (and as a login shell of course).

Zoltan