On 2024-07-14 at 17:00:12, Junio C Hamano wrote: > <rsbecker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > This looks like a different between ksh and bash. Under bash, the test > > works. I can live with that but will have to force bash to be used as the > > shebang #!/bin/sh defaults to ksh on this box. > > It turns out that the version of ksh I used in my description does > not seem to grok "local" at all. I vaguely recall that we've written > off various hobbist reimplementation of ksh as unusable enough, but > this one is ksh93 direct from AT&T Research. > > I guess when we said "as long as we limit our use to a simple 'this > variable has visibility limited to the function and its children' > and nothing else, it is portable enough across practically everybody > we care about", we have written off the real ksh, too. > > In the meantime, we may want to document this in a more prominent > way. Perhaps like so: > > -------- >8 --------------- >8 --------------- >8 -------- > Subject: doc: guide to use of "local" shell language construct > > The scripted Porcelain commands do not allow use of "local" because > it is not universally supported, but we use it liberally in our test > scripts, which means some POSIX compliant shells (like "ksh93") can > not be used to run our tests. > > Document the status quo, and hint that we might want to change the > situation in the fiture. I don't think this is the right approach. Every version of ksh _except_ AT&T ksh works just fine here. pdksh, mksh, lksh, OpenBSD's ksh (which is also its /bin/sh) work fine, as do bash, dash, FreeBSD's sh (ash), Busybox's sh (also ash), and zsh (when run in sh mode with 5.9 or newer). AT&T ksh is considering adding local in a newer version for this reason. Literally only AT&T ksh is not supported here, and so anyone can set SHELL_PATH to any suitable shell. I don't think it's useful to get rid of local when there are a variety of acceptable and portable options. -- brian m. carlson (they/them or he/him) Toronto, Ontario, CA
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