[cvs] bogofilter/src/tests t.maint,1.8,1.9

[Matthias Andree]

Piotr KUCHARSKI <chopin at sgh.waw.pl> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 12:03:15AM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
>> echo -n isn't portable (Solaris prints a leading -n rather than
>> suppressing the LF)
>
> Just for clarification, Solaris /usr/ucb/echo understands -n,
> /usr/bin/echo does not.

Using programs from /usr/ucb/... or /usr/xpg4/... is a two-edged sword:
Some UCB or XPG4 commands have different sets of shortcomings when
compared to the /usr/ucb commands, other UCB or XPG4 commands have
limitations over the /usr/bin commands. Finding the right tool isn't so
easy.

We're already setting environment variables to enforce backwards
compatibility options in GNU tools because they dropped options that
were in earlier revisions of some standard.

I'd wish there was a tiny POSIX-compliant shell with built-in tools that
we could ship...

When I wrote the test suite, I've considered other languages than
stripped-down ksh, Perl has been especially tempting, but I've decided
against such languages because the test suite is most useful when it's
used by many users. Perl OTOH seems to encourage writing unstructured
ad-hoc "WORN" code (write once, read never) and it's quite easy to shoot
holes in your feet with... Particularly Perl 5.0 doesn't have some of
the nicer "3-option open()" features that are easier to use correctly;
Python and particularly Ruby or Lua aren't ubiquitous, and I don't know
much of the latter.

Good ideas to reduce dependency on particular behaviour of system
utilities without adding too many dependencies (of uncommon software)
are very welcome.

-- 
Matthias Andree

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