POSIX compliance is exactly the heart of this. Just because dash *claims* to
comply
with the standard doesn't necessarily mean that it *actually* does.
Specifically, as quoted in bug #92189, section 2.6.4 of IEEE 1003.1 states
If the shell variable x contains a value that forms a valid integer
constant, then
the arithmetic expansions "$((x))" and "$(($x))" shall return the same
value.
If dash doesn't behave this way, which it doesn't, then it is not POSIX
compliant. That being said, I don't believe that POSIX requires /bin/sh
to be compliant. However, the whole trend in *nix systems over the last
decade or two has been to _improve_ interoperability by adhering to
standards. Using a non-POSIX shell for /bin/sh clearly goes against
that trend. It seems pointless to introduce these compatibility issues
that require either editing an enormous number of scripts or
reconfiguring systems to symlink /bin/sh to bash instead of dash just to
save a few kb of disk space.
In my opinion, that is doubly so since the incompatibility is recently
introduced. That is, /bin/sh _used_ to be bash, and it was (IMO
gratuitously) changed in a way that created problems. The maintainers
should acknowledge the error and either patch dash to actually comply
with POSIX or put bash back as the default /bin/sh.
--
dash as #!/bin/sh introduces countless incompatibilities
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/141481
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