Re: Re*: [PATCH] t1503: Fix arithmetic expansion syntax error when using dash

Ramsay Jones [off-list ref] writes:

Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

POSIX wants shells to support both "N" and "$N" and requires them to yield
the same answer to $((N)) and $(($N)), but we should aim for portability
in a case like this, especially when the price we pay to do so is so
small, i.e. a few extra dollars.

Indeed

quoted

By the way, on my box, I get this:

    $ ls l /bin/dash
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 104024 2008-08-26 02:36 /bin/dash*
    $ dpkg -l dash | grep '^ii'
    ii  dash              0.5.4-12          POSIX-compliant shell
    $ /bin/dash -c 'N=20 ; echo $(( N + 3 ))'
    23

Ah, yes, I should have checked for this... particularly since I now
vaguely remember reading that this had been "fixed"... *blush*
Sorry about that.

For the record, on my system I get:

    $ ls -l /bin/dash
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 80500 2007-03-05 06:00 /bin/dash*
    $ dpkg -l dash | grep '^ii'
    ii  dash           0.5.3-5ubuntu2 The Debian Almquist Shell
    $ /bin/dash -c 'N=20; echo $(( N + 3 ))'
    /bin/dash: arith: syntax error: " N + 3 "

quoted

I just left it vague by saying "e.g. older dash" in below, but we may want
to be more precise in the documentation.

I found a bug report:

    http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dash/+bug/92189

which had a post against it which implied that this was fixed in
version 0.5.4-3. I went over to packages.debian.org to read the
ChangeLog for this version, but I could not conclude anything
from that text. :(

Do we need to be more precise?

Should I re-work the commit message and re-submit?

I don't think so; we now know that dash 0.5.3 or older may have this
problem and that is clear enough for our purpose.

Thanks.