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From: friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Is SVR2 /bin/sh backwards compatible to v7?
Summary: test(1) in Sys V Rel 3
Message-ID: <1044@vsi.COM>
Date: 5 Feb 89 00:47:00 GMT
References: <165@apmpyr.nzapmb.co.nz> <57653@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA
Lines: 21

Carl Gutekunst writes:
>
>  The differences in the System V shell I am aware of are:
> 
> - test(1) is built in, and returns different values for directories. Since
>   the System V test(1) returns values that are more correct than the BSD
>   test(1), it seems unlikely that this would break anything.

I'd like to expand on this a little.  In the Sys V Rel 3 shell, test(1)
uses stat(2) rather than access(2) to determine accessibility of the
mentioned file (not just for directories).  For shell scripts called
from setuid/setgid systems, this difference is important (in your favor:
SVR3 test is indeed "more correct" than the BSD version).

     Steve

-- 
Stephen J. Friedl        3B2-kind-of-guy            friedl@vsi.com
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