[X-Unix] awk

[Eugene Lee]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 08:46:38PM +0000, Stroller wrote:
: On Jan 7, 2004, at 5:41 pm, Eugene Lee wrote:
: >:
: >: There are annoying differences between "standard Unix" versions of the
: >: utilities and their GNU counterparts. Usually they Unix versions are
: >: compatible with the GNU versions, but the GNU versions are not
: >: compatible with the Unix versions.   ... Just as scripts written for
: >: /bin/sh will work in /bin/ksh or /bin/bash ... scripts written for
: >: either ksh or zsh will not run in sh.
: >
: >Too bad /bin/bash is the same as /bin/sh.  :-)
: 
: Excuse me if I missed the joke, but from `man bash`:
: 
: DESCRIPTION
:        Bash  is  an  sh-compatible  command language interpreter that executes
:        commands read from the standard input or from a file.  Bash also incor-
:        porates useful features from the Korn and C shells (ksh and csh).

Well, bash also has useful features from ksh and csh, that means that
these features are not available in old sh.  Therefore, any bash script
that uses any of these new features is not guaranteed to work on a
machine that has the original sh and not bash.  This is just another
example of a GNU version of a tool (i.e. bash) is not compatible with
the Unix version (i.e. sh).


-- 
Eugene Lee
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/