On Thu, 28 Aug 2025 at 00:36, Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> wrote:
> On 8/27/25 10:29 AM, Zachary Santer wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 10:19 AM Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> wrote: > >> On 8/26/25 6:40 PM, Zachary Santer wrote: > > Bash already provides one. You're just leaving it undocumented so > > you're more free to get rid of it in the future? > > I'm leaving it undocumented to discourage its use, yes. One thing I've > discovered is that you can never remove a feature (e.g. $[expr]). > This strikes me as self defeating: the reason it can't be removed is because people are still using it, and they're still using it because they're not seeing documentation that tells them not to. The assumption that people will assume that something is deprecated if they cannot find it in the manual represents a travesty of misunderstanding of human cognition: the manual is HUGE, so they'll simply assume either that it's in there but they can't find it, or that the manual is incomplete (and they'd be right). "Deprecate" means making a declaration that something is obsolete. Remaining silent does not count. -Martin
