Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: GNU/Linux stance by Richard Stallman | Date | Mon, 29 Mar 1999 08:27:19 -0500 | From | "Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH" <> |
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In message <19990329102549.A7484@pcep-jamie.cern.ch>, Jamie Lokier writes: +----- | On all systems I've encountered, `:' is a perfectly good command for not | doing anything. Is it too new to be portable? +--->8
"New"? That's how we old-timers used to have to comment shell scripts before "#" comments were added to /bin/sh.
The reason it's not used as a generic command substituter (usually in Makefiles) is that it's a shell builtin. make execvp's commands, so : would fail unless you had in the command some kind of marker that told make to pass the command to sh instead (in older/non-GNU make, this mostly means wildcards).
-- brandon s. allbery [os/2][linux][solaris][japh] allbery@kf8nh.apk.net system administrator [WAY too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu carnegie mellon / electrical and computer engineering KF8NH We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
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