Eric Blake <e...@byu.net> writes: > According to Simon Josefsson on 4/1/2009 9:30 AM: >>> Even though Posix says this should silently return non-zero exit status, >>> some test implementations complain to stderr if the argument starts with >>> something that looks like an operator or option. Hence, any time you are >>> validating the contents of a variable that can be set outside of your >>> control, you should always prefix it with x, to ensure that it doesn't >>> start with -, (, ), etc. >> >> "test implementations"? If there aren't any more widely deployed >> implementations out there that break (like irix, hpux or some other >> system that we do support), IMO it makes the code harder to read for no >> good reason and that we are better off making people stop use these test >> implementations. > > test(1) is often a shell builtin.
Ah, sorry, I thought you meant experimental shell implementations. > And we support a wide variety of shells, very many of which do not > comply with POSIX. For example, Solaris /bin/sh. This portability > pitfall is documented in the autoconf manual. I've read it now, thanks for the pointer. /Simon
