On 11/8/18 3:37 PM, Eric Blake wrote: > If I'm reading POSIX correctly, shift is a special built-in utility, and if > '$#' is 0 or 1, then 'shift 2' counts as a utility error that shall exit > the shell, per the table in 2.8.1 Consequences of Shell Errors: > > http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_08_01 > > > > dash gets this right: > > $ dash -c 'set 1 >> shift 2 >> echo "oops"' > dash: 2: shift: can't shift that many > > but bash happily lets 'shift 2' fail with $? set to 1 but continues on with > execution of the rest of the script, even when in POSIX mode:
As you later note: "If the n operand is invalid or is greater than "$#", this may be considered a syntax error and a non-interactive shell may exit; if the shell does not exit in this case, a non-zero exit status shall be returned. Otherwise, zero shall be returned." So the bash behavior is not a conformance issue, and allowed by the standard. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU c...@case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/