On 6/22/21 6:11 PM, Lawrence Velázquez wrote:
On Tue, Jun 22, 2021, at 8:52 PM, Martin Jambon wrote:
It's better. However, the reader is still left wondering what "the
shell" is referring to in first sentence.
Subshells aside, I have a hard time believing that "the process ID
of the shell" confuses anybody in practice. Even POSIX doesn't
overcomplicate this:
$
Expands to the decimal process ID of the invoked shell. In
a subshell (see Shell Execution Environment), '$' shall
expand to the same value as that of the current shell.
(https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_05_02)
This language implies that a subshell is part of the shell but not a
shell in itself. This is what I pointed out earlier but I received a
conflicting answer.
This is confirmed by this definition from posix:
A subshell environment shall be created as a duplicate of the shell
environment, except that signal traps that are not being ignored shall
be set to the default action. Changes made to the subshell environment
shall not affect the shell environment. Command substitution, commands
that are grouped with parentheses, and asynchronous lists shall be
executed in a subshell environment. Additionally, each command of a
multi-command pipeline is in a subshell environment; as an extension,
however, any or all commands in a pipeline may be executed in the
current environment. All other commands shall be executed in the current
shell environment.
(https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_12)
In the posix definition, a subshell
- is not necessarily implemented as a separate process
- belongs to a unique shell
- is not a shell
This makes the term "the shell" unambiguous to a reader who's aware of
this - but it's obvious to me that "subshell" should be clarified in the
context of '$$'.
A subset is a set, a subgroup is a group, a subtype is a type, a subtree
is a tree, a subprocess is a process.
However a submarine is not a marine, and a subshell is not a shell (sea
stuff!).
Anyway, I left a suggestion to revise the documentation for '$$' in my
previous email. That's the best I can produce at this time.
Martin
