Re: Regression in pattern substitution with compat42

[Chet Ramey]

On 2/9/23 5:32 PM, Martin D Kealey wrote:
> On 8 Feb 2023 at 18:50Z Tom Briden wrote:
> > Bash Version: 5.2
> > Patch Level: 15
> > Release Status: release
> >
> > As of version 5.2-beta, replacing a single backslash with a double backslash is 
> > no longer possible when using BASH_COMPAT=4.2.
>
> On 9 Feb 2023 at 15:57Z Chet Ramey wrote:
> > shopt -u patsub_replacement
>
> Surely that should be automatic with compat51 and earlier, since it's a
> breaking change to previous behaviour?

That's not what the compat mode is for. It's intended as a temporary
stopgap for things that change between releases -- bug fixes or whatever --
when there's no other way to control that behavior, and gives people an
opportunity to fix their code.

In this case, the behavior is controlled by an option. You just don't like
the default setting.

We had this exact same discussion back in November.


> Is there any chance that we could get a scheme like this for Bash, where
> standard releases come with a "don't use after" date, so that script writers
> don't have to cope with broken versions potentially remaining forever?

I support one release at a time -- the current one. The distros do what
they do. There are still Linux versions shipping with bash-4.2, which was
released in 2010. I do not have the capacity to support all of those.


> PS: the current "beta testing" arrangement seems to me to have too few
> participants by at least two orders of magnitude. We need to encourage
> "bleeding edge" Linux distros and similar to offer pre-built alpha and beta
> releases of Bash.

All the bash testing releases are public, and announced here and other
places. I don't have the time or energy to chase the distros urging them
to test releases -- it's hard enough to get the translation project to
react to testing releases.

Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/