Is SVR2 /bin/sh backwards compatible to v7?

Stephen J. Friedl friedl at vsi.COM
Sun Feb 5 10:47:00 AEST 1989


Carl Gutekunst writes:
>
>  The differences in the System V shell I am aware of are:
> 
> - test(1) is built in, and returns different values for directories. Since
>   the System V test(1) returns values that are more correct than the BSD
>   test(1), it seems unlikely that this would break anything.

I'd like to expand on this a little.  In the Sys V Rel 3 shell, test(1)
uses stat(2) rather than access(2) to determine accessibility of the
mentioned file (not just for directories).  For shell scripts called
from setuid/setgid systems, this difference is important (in your favor:
SVR3 test is indeed "more correct" than the BSD version).

     Steve

-- 
Stephen J. Friedl        3B2-kind-of-guy            friedl at vsi.com
V-Systems, Inc.       I speak for you only      attmail!vsi!friedl
Santa Ana, CA  USA       +1 714 545 6442    {backbones}!vsi!friedl
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