Importing mksh in base

[Cy Schubert]

In message <32153.1548546852 at kaos.jnpr.net>, "Simon J. Gerraty" writes:
> Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com> wrote:
> > Interactively ksh93's command completion listing looks unconventional 
> > but it functions the same.
> > 
> > However programmatically it's the standard. Large commercial vendors, 
> > like Oracle, still require ksh for its array handling among other 
> > things.
>
> pdksh (hence I assume mksh) has had array support for ages.
> The only thing I ever found it useful for was cd history,
> and I actually have an implementation of that for sh that does not need
> arrays.

IIRC it's not compatible.

>
> > It has that advantage. For embedded this is an advantage. However if 
> > embedded is using ksh as a scripting language mksh and pdksh aren't 
>
> As noted earlier I've used [pd]ksh as shell for 30 years.
> I do *not* write ksh scripts (except for .kshrc etc ;-)
>
> The beauty of ksh as interactive shell is it's (mostly) compatability
> with /bin/sh - which scripts should be written in.

Looking at ksh93-devel sources there is a SHOPT_BASH option, which 
emulates a Bash shell. The emulation is not complete though.

14-06-02 +When compiled with the SHOPT_BASH and run with the name bash,
          the shell now uses dynamic scoping for name() and function 
name.
          In addition the builtins declare and local are supported.
          The SHOPT_BASH option is on by default in the Makefile.
          More work remains with the bash compatibility option.

>
> Now on some systems (HPUX springs to mind ;-) /bin/sh is so bad that
> one has to use ksh to run scripts - but they are still sh scripts.

IMO HP/UX is as good as dead. I've never had anything good to say about 
HP/UX.


-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com>
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org

	The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.