Hubert Feyrer wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
>> bash/Linux allows "==" as an alternative to "=" in their test(1)  
>> command.
>> I wonder if we want to save some trouble and just make our test(1)  
>> silently accept that too, instead of fixing all the broken scripts  
>> out there.
>>
>> It'd be an extension to POSIX, so I don't see much of a problem.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>
> Apparently there were quite a number of them, and instead of  
> addressing eac of them I'd like to explain my motivation behind  
> this change, after the uproar and namecalling that I got:
>
>  * I see NetBSD as an operating system project, and for me an OS is
>    something to run software written not only from "NetBSD" but from
>    any user. If someone thinks '==' is preferably over/equivalent  
> to '='
>    for test(1) I see no problem improving NetBSD's usability  
> instead of
>    printing an error messagen. There's prior art in bash to handle  
> '=='
>    which is used as /bin/sh on a majority of machines out there, so  
> trying
>    to help the user seemed OK for me.

Setting portability concerns and pkgsrc pains aside for a moment:  
While there's prior art in the GNU/bash world for this, given the C  
ancestry of the == operator (as you portrayed it) it's not all that  
obvious that it's meant to be a synonym for =, as opposed to -eq.   
That's what's bothering me substiantially about supporting this  
"design".


- Klaus