Re: [PATCH] [MAN] Document optional open parenthesis for case patterns.

[Sven Mascheck <mascheck@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 10:42:19PM -0400, Philipp Weis wrote:

> while inspecting some dash scripts on my system, I was surprised to
> see that some of them use an open parenthesis at the beginning of case
> patterns while that's not mentioned in the manpage. Dash currently is
> fine with and without that parenthesis (parser.c:413).

BTW, This feature is a workaround:
Without the left paren, several shells¹ are confused with "case"
inside $( ), because now the parens are not "balanced" anymore.
Although dash doesn't need this (in fact any ash variant),
it was added ('99) for reasons of script portability.
Another benefit is easy searching for matching parens in editors.

¹ bash pre-4, ksh88, pdksh-variants
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