[ On Wed, January 6, 1999 at 10:29:34 (-0800), Curt Sampson wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: MAKEDEV is not portable
>
> This was the first thing that came to my mind, too, but I didn't
> know if a /bin/sh without shell arithmetic would be likely to have
> shell functions. Is it?

Absolutely.  Almost 99% of Unix-based Bourne-compatible shells without
Korn Shell arithmetic have support for shell functions, though not
always in a syntactically compatible form.

The *only* Unix-based sh-like shell I'm aware of which has neither is
the original Unix V7 Bourne Shell (i.e. the one that was in 4BSD until
it was replaced by the free "ash" derivative).  Ash might not have had
functions originally either -- I don't really remember, but it did by
the time 4.4BSD was released (there's an entire sub-directory full of
useful shell functions in the 4.4BSD-Lite sources).

So far as I can remember the real Bourne Shell had functions as early as
AT&T Unix System V Release 2, though I don't have those manual pages
accessible online or in paper form at the moment....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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