Re: Future shell work - comments reqyuested

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 09:01:26AM -0400, Izaac wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 07:46:39AM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
> > So, opinions?
> 
> Stop.
> 
> Leave /bin/sh alone.

I strongly disagree and note the obvious internal inconsistency in your
argument (such as it is):

> If you want features for a scripting environment, use a different shell.
> 
> The /bin/sh is an environment intended primarily to execute scripts.

In the direction you seem to be headed lies the true and vivid idiocy of
the Debian shell, which is *larger* than our shell (depending on platform
and compiler flags, etc.) yet strips out functionality every other modern
shell offers, such as command line editing -- for purely doctrinaire
reasons, since after all, these features were in what they started with.

Removing features as a way to enforce some kind of religious notion of
programmer discipline (which seems to be what the rest of your message
suggests) is dumb.  I would like to see our shell remain about the size
and speed it is (both of which are best-of-class) but gain something close
to feature parity with ksh.  I think Robert's work is getting us there.

Thor