Something funny about Windows

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Fri Dec 16 19:48:40 UTC 2005


On Fri, 2005-12-16 at 11:55, Mike McCarty wrote:
 
> > 
> > Normally, I'd suggest ./test and expect that to work reliably across
> > Unix-like operating systems.
> 
> Possibly. The word "test" is reserved in some shells.

It's a built-in, which means only that it is found ahead of a PATH
search for executables.  You can still specify the path to a
real executable if you want.

> > I've no experience with Xenix, for which I am very thankful. My
> 
> You should be. I used it on 386 machines for a year in 1984 or so.
> It was "almost UNIX". Sort of.
> 
> > experience with SCO Unix (its successor) means I don't want to suggest
> > that *would* have worked on Xenix.
> 
> Yes, SCO UNIX is "more nearly" UNIX.

There have been very few variations in the bourne shell so I
wouldn't expect a difference in that respect. If you go back
far enough you might find one that didn't have test as a
built-in and would always have run /bin/test or it's '[' link
as an external program.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com





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