if then elif then else fi -- Problem report

[Malcolm Kay <malcolm.kay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I notice that 'dash' fails on many scripts that ran okay with
the traditional Bourne shell 'sh'.

On closer examination I find that it does not conform to any
of the man pages that I've been able to find for 'dash'.

Should I create a problem report? Where should I send it?

The particular version is dash-0.5.5.1 running on
FreeBSD xi.home 8.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE #0: 
Sat Nov 21 15:48:17 UTC 2009 

I have a report that the same trouble occurs in the 'dash'
as shipped with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

The problem is that 'dash' bombs out with an empty list in:

if ...
then
  list
elif ...
then
  list
fi

or in:

if ...
then
  list
else
  list
fi

The latter gives for example:
  Syntax error: "else" unexpected.

Yet the man pages clearly state that a list consists of zero 
or more commands --
<quote>
Lists -- Generally Speaking
     A list is a sequence of zero or more commands separated by 
newlines,
     semicolons, or ampersands, and optionally terminated by one 
of these
     three characters.
</quote>

Should I create a problem report? Where should I send it?

Cheers,

Malcolm

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