> Besides, it's ksh the performance of which was found to be lagging 
> behind sh, and ksh is not normally used for such scripts anyways.  But 
> if you're using ksh instead of sh, then you could easily just write ksh 
> scripts, which can use many more builtins and language features and make 
> calls to some external commands often unnecessary and hence the entire 
> scripts significantly faster.

Actually netbsd's sh has many of those features $((...)) ${..%%...}
that remove the need to run external programs.

It is also possible to count with the AT&T sh and do some pattern
matching - runing expr has always been a 'good way' to slug a shell
script - especially if it happens inside a loop.

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk