From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "David A. Wheeler" Subject: Re: ia64 git pull Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 23:30:18 -0400 Message-ID: <42686FCA.2010605@dwheeler.com> References: <200504212042.j3LKgng04318@unix-os.sc.intel.com> <200504212155.j3LLtho04949@unix-os.sc.intel.com> <200504212301.j3LN1Do05507@unix-os.sc.intel.com> <20050422012546.GD1474@pasky.ji.cz> <17000.22515.170455.192374@sodium.jf.intel.com> <20050422015340.GD7443@pasky.ji.cz> <17000.23588.462823.574142@sodium.jf.intel.com> Reply-To: dwheeler@dwheeler.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Petr Baudis , tony.luck@intel.com, Linus Torvalds , linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, git@vger.kernel.org X-From: linux-ia64-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Apr 22 05:24:05 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([12.107.209.244]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DOolw-0001LE-UD for glpi-linux-ia64-2@gmane.org; Fri, 22 Apr 2005 05:24:05 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261936AbVDVD2V (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 23:28:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261932AbVDVD2V (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 23:28:21 -0400 Received: from cujo.runbox.com ([193.71.199.138]:62154 "EHLO cujo.runbox.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261931AbVDVD2N (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Apr 2005 23:28:13 -0400 Received: from [10.9.9.1] (helo=bolivar.runbox.com) by greyhound.runbox.com with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1DOopu-0002mX-7L; Fri, 22 Apr 2005 05:28:10 +0200 Received: from [70.18.249.32] (helo=[192.168.2.73]) by bolivar.runbox.com with asmtp (uid:258406) (Exim 4.34) id 1DOopt-0006bP-Oy; Fri, 22 Apr 2005 05:28:10 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2-1.3.2 (X11/20050324) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: Inaky Perez-Gonzalez In-Reply-To: <17000.23588.462823.574142@sodium.jf.intel.com> X-Sender: 258406@vger.kernel.org Sender: linux-ia64-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org Petr Baudis writes: >>Still, why would you escape it? My shell will not take # as a >>comment start if it is immediately after an alphanumeric character. I guess there MIGHT be some command shell implementation that stupidly _DID_ accept "#" as a comment character, even immediately after an alphanumeric. If that's true, then using # there would be a pain for portability. But I think that's highly improbable. A quick peek at the Single Unix Specification as posted by the Open Group seems to say that, according to the standards, that's NOT okay: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html#tag_02 Basically, the command shell is supposed to tokenize, and "#" only means comment if it's at the beginning of a token. And as far as I can tell, it's not an issue in practice either. I did a few quick tests on Fedora Core 3 and OpenBSD. On Fedora Core 3, I can say that bash, ash & csh all do NOT consider "#" as a comment start if an alpha precedes it. The same is true for OpenBSD /bin/sh, /bin/csh, and /bin/rksh. If such different shells do the same thing (this stuff isn't even legal C-shell text!), it's likely others do too. --- David A. Wheeler