Re: PATH then SHELLS (Was: bison-1.29c 'configure' problems on Solaris 8)

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden>
> Date: 05 Oct 2001 11:10:34 +0200
> 
> Errr, I don't understand this paragraph, which seems to agree with
> me.  I'm asking why we *don't* loop over shells (hence bash before
> sh), and then over path.

Because if you loop over shells first, then you're more likely to find
a shell in a weird and undesirable place.  For example, if the code
looks something like this:

  for shell in sh bash ksh; do
    for dir in /bin /usr/bin /home/eggert/bin; do
      if ok_shell $dir/$shell; then
        SHELL=$dir/shell
        break 2 # unportable, but it's just an example
      fi
    done
  done

then on Solaris 8 this code is likely to return SHELL=/home/eggert/sh,
since /bin/sh and /usr/bin/sh are old-fashioned.  It doesn't matter if
you reorder the shells; even if the first line said 'for shell in bash
ksh sh; do' you'd still have the problem.