The following reply was made to PR misc/23729; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: misc/23729: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 16:55:17 +0200

 On Sun, 08 Oct 2006, David Holland wrote:
 >     % sh -c ./hullo 
 >     ./hullo: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
 >  
 >     % ksh -c ./hullo 
 >     ./hullo: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
 >  
 >  The behavior exhibited by sh and ksh is historic, but hasn't been
 >  useful since #! was invented, which was a long time ago.
 >  
 >  Probably the best thing to do is to remove it.
 
 I agree.  I'd like {sh $file} to always interpret $file as a shell
 script, and never try to exec it or parse #! lines.  And I'd like {sh
 -c $file} to check whether file is an alias or builtin command, and if
 not then exec it (leaving the kernel to worry about magic numbers and
 #! lines).  I think POSIX agrees with me, but it's a bit difficult to
 follow their description.
 
 --apb (Alan Barrett)