Re: Potential ksh bug?

On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 11:04 PM Bodie <bodie@bodie.cz> wrote:

> On 17.11.2020 05:04, Jordan Geoghegan wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm not sure if this is a bug, or if it's just a pdksh thing, but I
> > stumbled upon some interesting behaviour when I was tinkering around
> > with quoting and using a poor mans array:
> >
> > test=$(cat <<'__EOT'
> > # I'll choose not to close this quote
> > other_stuff
> > __EOT
> > )
> >
> > echo "$test"
> >
> >
> > When I run this command on ash, dash, yash, bash, zsh or ksh93 I get
> > the following output:
> >
> > # I'll choose not to close this quote
> > other_stuff
> >
> > But when I run it on ksh from base or any pdksh derivative it throws
> > an error about an unclosed quote:
> >
> > test.sh[8]: no closing quote
> >
> > This snippet works on every POSIX-y shell in the ports tree, and fails
> > on every pdksh variant I tried, including on NetBSD and DragonflyBSD
> > as well. I don't have the requisite esoteric knowledge regarding
> > pdksh's internal quoting logic, so I'm hoping one of the gurus here
> > can determine whether this is a bug or if I'm just doing something
> > annoying.
> >
> > Any insight that can be provided would be much appreciated.
> >
>
> What exactly are you trying to achieve?
>
> If you will look in sh(1) for 'Command expansion' then there are defined
> rules and your form is not between them.
>

I disagree. I believe this:

cat <<'__EOT'
# I'll choose not to close this quote
other_stuff
__EOT

matches the syntax for 'command'...once you take into account redirections,
including 'here-docs'. Or do you believe that's not a valid command on
it's own? To put another way, I agree with halex@ that this is a (known,
not yet fixed) bug.


So error message about missing closing quote is actually proper
> behavior.
>

Nope. This is a bug in OpenBSD ksh.



> As well it is good idea to avoid reserved words as a names for variables
> ;-)
> (test............)


Hmm?

* 'test' is not a reserved word in the shell
* shell variable names are a completely different namespace than shell
reserved words or commands
* code written to check whether something is a bug is 1000% out-of-bounds
for style comments: either there's a bug or there isn't


Philip Guenther