Text File

Acbosg.287 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:ARPAVAX:mhtsa!harpo!cbosg!mark Wed Dec 16 10:39:14 1981 Re: '#' botch in 4.1BSD Bourne Shell Sorry, Steve, but you're way off base.

Bell has also gone to the convention that # begins a comment in the Bourne shell. # is the standard UNIX comment character and most programs that allow comments do it the same way: anything after a # is ignored. The old comment mechanism in sh (:) didn't work worth a damn and everybody knows it. Berkeley was merely moving in step with Bell.

You can fix your old Bourne shell scripts by putting #! /bin/sh at the front of them, and csh scripts by putting #! /bin/csh in front of them. You'll also have to stop using # as a backup character - Rand uses , and this seems like as good a convention as any.

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.