Re: [PATCH] thunderbird-patch-inline: avoid bashism

["D. Ben Knoble" <ben.knoble@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 8:55 PM brian m. carlson
<sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:
>
> The use of "echo -e" is not portable and not specified by POSIX.  dash
> does not support any options except "-n", and so this script will not
> work on operating systems which use that as /bin/sh.
>
> Fortunately, the solution is easy: switch to printf(1), which is
> specified by POSIX and allows the escape sequences we want to use.  This
> will allow the script to work with any POSIX shell.
>
> Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
> ---
>  contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline/appp.sh | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> I noticed this in Debian bug 772238[0], while looking for any bug
> reports that I might be able to fix.  It was reported in 2014 and has
> gone unfixed since then, so possibly this script is seeing relatively
> little use on Debian and Ubuntu.
>
> I have not CC'd any of the authors because nobody's touched this in over
> 9 years and none of those people are still active.
>
> [0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=772238
>
> diff --git a/contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline/appp.sh b/contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline/appp.sh
> index 1053872eea..c55c2caa41 100755
> --- a/contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline/appp.sh
> +++ b/contrib/thunderbird-patch-inline/appp.sh
> @@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ BODY=$(sed -e "1,/${SEP}/d" $1)
>  CMT_MSG=$(sed -e '1,/^$/d' -e '/^---$/,$d' "${PATCH}")
>  DIFF=$(sed -e '1,/^---$/d' "${PATCH}")
>
> -CCS=$(echo -e "$CMT_MSG\n$HEADERS" | sed -n -e 's/^Cc: \(.*\)$/\1,/gp' \
> +CCS=$(printf '%s\n%s' "$CMT_MSG" "$HEADERS" | sed -n -e 's/^Cc: \(.*\)$/\1,/gp' \

Looks obviously correct to me (I once wrote POSIX-compatible echos
just to see how hard it was [1]), though I find it interesting that
`sed` can process input lacking a final newline.

>         -e 's/^Signed-off-by: \(.*\)/\1,/gp')
>
>  echo "$SUBJECT" > $1
>

[1]: https://github.com/benknoble/echocho

-- 
D. Ben Knoble