Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!paula
From: paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: shell bug
Message-ID: <50765@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jun 91 03:29:05 GMT
References: <57433@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 67

In article <57433@nigel.ee.udel.edu> v882087@si.hhs.nl writes:
>In article <9106280203.AA09940@mcsun.EU.net> I write:
>>
>>[...about a couple suspected bugs in the Minix shell ...]
>
>If this is a bug, I can only say it is a bug in your V7 documentation. I
>have never ever seen a UNIX(like) shell that accepted the for .. do
>construction without a semicolon (";")

Try this under SunOS 4.1.1:

# set a b c
# for n do
> echo $n
> done
a
b
c
# 

Or Ultrix 3.1:

$ set a b c
$ for n do
> echo $n
> done
a
b
c
$

As you would expect, both of those systems complain about things like:

for n in a b c do
echo $n
done

The Seventh Edition Unix Programmer's Manual states that "reserved
words like do and done are only recognized following a newline or
semicolon."  But in the next paragraph, it says:

"Another example of the use of the for loop is the create command whose
text is

	for i do >$i; done

The command

	create alpha beta

ensures that two empty files alpha and beta exist and are empty.  [...]
Notice also that a semicolon (or newline) is required before done."

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which shell
has a bug.  I've managed to work around the various problems and have
now made it all the way through the perl Configure script.  The next
step is to run all the *.SH scripts manually.  (The shell ran into
some sort of nesting limit when Configure tried to run them automatically.)
Then I get to try to actually *compile* the dang thing!  :-)

Paul Allen


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul L. Allen                       | pallen@atc.boeing.com
Boeing Advanced Technology Center   | ...!uw-beaver!bcsaic!pallen