% in $PATH

[Stephane Chazelas <stephane.chazelas@gmail.com>]

Hello,

ash/dash have a nice feature that allows to have:

PATH=/bin:%builtin:/usr/bin:/some/dir%func:/sbin

To have commands in /bin take precedence over builtins and
files in /some/dir being looked up for autoloaded functions (a
bit like FPATH in ksh/zsh).

That's nice but the way it is implemented, that means that %
characters in $PATH cause problems. See for instance:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/126955/percent-in-path-environment-variable

Where someone ran into it when they had a:

/home/torbjorr/deployed/vector/x86_64-GNU%2fLinux directory in
there.

Given than only "builtin" and "func" are recognised after "%", I
think it would be better if the PATH handling accepted any other
string like "foo%bar", "foo%2f", "foo%functions" as-is as a
normal $PATH component.

And foo%2fbar%func meaning "foo%2fbar" treated as a directory
with autoloadable functions.

-- 
Stephane