Forcing /bin/sh in a script under V/386 3.2 Korn shell

CME Ned Nowotny ned at pebbles.cad.mcc.com
Thu Jul 20 01:52:24 AEST 1989


In article <1152 at vsi.COM> friedl at vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>In article <1792 at cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>, ned at pebbles.cad.mcc.com (CME Ned Nowotny) writes:
=>> In fact, one of the most useful things you could do
=>> with ":" was to comment your shell script since ":" does nothing
=>> with the arguments (a.k.a.  comment string) that you may provide
=>> it.
=>
=>While this is true, it can be misleading.  In particular, the line
=>
=>	cat file file2 > file3
=>
=>isn't commented out by prefixing it with a colon.  Cat doesn't run,
=>but redirection *will* take place and file3 will be truncated.

True.  This is probably one of the reasons an actual comment character (#)
was eventually added to the Bourne shell.


Ned Nowotny, MCC CAD Program, Box 200195, Austin, TX  78720  Ph: (512) 338-3715
ARPA: ned at mcc.com                   UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!ned
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