From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18235 invoked from network); 9 Jul 2001 19:42:37 -0000 Received: from sunsite.dk (130.225.51.30) by ns1.primenet.com.au with SMTP; 9 Jul 2001 19:42:37 -0000 Received: (qmail 19597 invoked by alias); 9 Jul 2001 19:42:29 -0000 Mailing-List: contact zsh-workers-help@sunsite.dk; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk X-No-Archive: yes X-Seq: 15347 Received: (qmail 19582 invoked from network); 9 Jul 2001 19:42:27 -0000 Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 15:42:22 -0400 (EDT) From: David Korn Message-Id: <200107091942.PAA93250@raptor.research.att.com> X-Mailer: mailx (AT&T/BSD) 9.8 2001-01-01 $ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: zsh-workers@sunsite.dk Subject: Proposal to standardize the shell Hi, I am the author of ksh. One of my primary goals in writing ksh was to provide a portable and universal scripting language for UNIX. I worked with the POSIX group in the development of a shell standard over ten years ago. Since then there have been numerous developments and various shells have emerged with many new and useful features. I would like to see if it is possible to come up with an enhanced shell standard that could be met by at least ksh, bash, and zsh. I have already contacted the bash author Chet Ramey, and he is interested. I am especially concerned with programming issues, but there might be some interactive features that could also be standardized. If the zsh workers are also interested in this effort let me know. Also, if you know who else should be included, please let me know. As a starting point we should develop the following lists: 1. Extensions to POSIX that are in all three shells. 2. Incompatibilities between shells. 3. Extensions or features in each shell that should be in the standard. 4. Things that should be obsoleted. 5. How do handle compatibilty issues between shells and POSIX. Once we have achieved some type of consensus, we should see if we can get some standards organization, such as POSIX or X/Open to work on standardization. David Korn research!dgk dgk@research.att.com