On 8/29/25 10:02 AM, Martin D Kealey wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2025, 03:40 Chet Ramey, <chet.ra...@case.edu <mailto:chet.ra...@case.edu>> wrote:This has never been documented. If that's true, how are there scripts using it, and people asking about it?
People read the source code and wrote about what they found. Many such cases.
It's not just documentation that you've written that needs to be
considered, because clearly this feature must be mentioned SOMEWHERE.
In theory, since it's never been documented, I could flip the define in
config-top.h and disable it by default.
This assumption is the root of the problem.
If it's not documented, then as far as some ordinary users are concerned,
it is NOT deprecated.
There is no specification for how it behaves; there is no expectation that
it will remain unchanged in the future; there is no expectation that it
will be present in the future. It's never been mentioned in any official
bash documentation or announcement (or NEWS/CHANGES/etc.). You might say
that the source code is always the official reference; I don't buy it here.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU c...@case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
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