dbprocs

[Bill Davidsen]

On 12 Apr 2000, Russ Allbery wrote:

> Kenichi Okada <okada at opaopa.org> writes:
> 
> > I use Solaris 2.5.1.
> > The command `dbprocs' don't work correctory.
> 
> > syntax error: `(' unexpected
> 
> Yeah, after looking at it I just wrote the same patch.  It doesn't look
> like using $() instead of `` is portable, and I don't think there's
> anything gained from the former.  I'm going to go ahead and commit this
> patch before I spin the release branch; we can fix it again if it turns
> out to be the wrong fix.

  There are several reasons to use $(), but not at the cost of
portability. it's (a) much easier to read, espacially if you (b) want/need
to next commands.

  Modern shells provide $(<file) so you don't need cat all the time, as
well. Just how old is 2.5.1, I think I was running that back in 93 or so?
Solaris is up to what, eight? I haven't tried INN on a SysIII machine, but
I have access to both SysIII and V7 (I am NOT kidding) systems. The SysIII
is still in production, or was at Thanksgiving...

  I'm not totally rambling, if we feel free to require features in quite
recent versions of perl, should we at some point stop worrying about
really old shells, and make the shell a config option, so bash could be
used? Not a suggestion, just food for thought.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.