From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 23077 invoked by alias); 17 Sep 2010 18:13:40 -0000 Mailing-List: contact zsh-workers-help@zsh.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk X-No-Archive: yes List-Id: Zsh Workers List List-Post: List-Help: X-Seq: 28269 Received: (qmail 18401 invoked from network); 17 Sep 2010 18:13:38 -0000 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on f.primenet.com.au X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI, SPF_HELO_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.3.1 Received-SPF: pass (ns1.primenet.com.au: SPF record at spf-1.redhat.com designates 209.132.183.28 as permitted sender) Message-ID: <4C93A654.90807@redhat.com> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:33:08 -0600 From: Eric Blake Organization: Red Hat User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100907 Fedora/3.1.3-1.fc13 Mnenhy/0.8.3 Thunderbird/3.1.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: zsh-workers@zsh.org Subject: avoid $status and $options in POSIX mode Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.67 on 10.5.11.11 POSIX states "The name space of environment variable names containing lowercase letters is reserved for applications. Applications can define any environment variables with names from this name space without modifying the behavior of the standard utilities." http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html#tag_08 Yet, the existence of zsh-magic variables like $status and $options infringe upon the right of a user's script to use this namespace for their own desires. For example, see this recent autoconf patch: http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/autoconf.git/commit/?id=23a2c336 It would be really nice if 'emulate sh' could disable zsh magic handling of any variables that infringe upon the lower-case namespace reserved for applications. -- Eric Blake eblake@redhat.com +1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org