Re: Style question $()

[Donn Terry <donn at verinet dot com>]

Zack Weinberg wrote:

> On Sun, 14 Feb 1999 18:09:33 +0000 (GMT), Joern Rennecke wrote:
> >> That still leaves the underlying problem: the current shell
> >> scripts/makefiles
> >> are broken (that is, will not run at all) in the absence of symlinks
> >> (and ???).
> >
> >So could the use of $() be made such that it's only used when no symlinks
> >are available?
> >Are there platforms that we care about that don't have symlinks and
> >ship with a V7 shell?
>
> I will bet real money that no platform exists which has a Posix
> /bin/sh and no symlinks.

Well, hand it over ;-).

Interix, today (and we're working assiduously on fixing that) is exactly
that way, because it sits on top of NTFS or FAT (need I say more?).
(I hope the boss forgives me for THAT one!) (OK... we don't have
/bin/sh (because there's no guarantee of a /bin, altho it can be
arranged) but sh, wherever it ends up, is POSIX.)

$() is easy to fix, relatively, because getting a shell working is relatively

easier than hacking the file system.

However, I will admit that it is a bit odd to be in that situation; most
"newish" Unixs do have both.  (Cygwin is likely to be another instance
of similar problems.)

As far as copying...  yes, but.  The current build scripts are supposed
to work by tweaking paths (and don't for the $() reason, and a couple
of others).  I'd really prefer to have a non-copy solution (disk space,
if nothing else) until such time as Interix does get symlinks.  (Patch
forthcoming, but it ain't pretty.)

Donn