What's wrong with this Bourne shell script?

[Larry Wall]

In article <SCOTT.90Aug9094016 at tab29.larc.nasa.gov> scott at tab29.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Yelich     (ODU) ) writes:
: >I hate it when people think we're espousing Perl as the One True Way.
: >Perl is just another tool.  Use where appropriate.  Don't use where not.
: 
: Perl is another tool.  I am attempting to decipher it.... but when someone
: asks me for SH, I give them SH.

Well, yes, but in general you don't get SH.  You get SH plus some assortment
of more or less standard tools.  What some of you find irritating is that
some of us treat Perl as a more or less standard tool.  It's like kids--if
you expect them to be good, they generally are.  I expect Perl to become
a standard.  Therefore I treat it as such.  Therefore it's fair game to
suggest it as a solution to the problem the user is trying to solve.
I didn't see any complaint about the solutions involving awk, and that's
a different language than SH...

Admittedly, on some static scale of standardization, basic old awk scores
a little higher than Perl.  But I'm getting old and impatient, and just
don't have time to pussyfoot around.  So I'm assuming the tail can wag
the dog.

Here is Perl.  It's yours.  It's everybody's.  It's part of Unix.

Use it as appropriate.

Larry