7 Jan
2020
7 Jan
'20
4:22 a.m.
On Mon, 6 Jan 2020, Chet Ramey wrote:
As I said, I never bothered to learn "$((...))" because "expr" works
just
fine. And I might come across an old machine at some time; I come from
the school of "Make it work before making it pretty" and I extend that to
backwards compatibility.
And "expr" is burned into my brain :-)
I have never
used all the fancy stuff in BASH such as the arithmetic
functions; I still use "expr" etc for portability.
Portability to what? The POSIX $((...)) arithmetic expansion is widely
implemented and near-universally available. Some of the other things are more esoteric, but you
should be able to
increase your expectation to POSIX features and still be sufficiently
portable.
I might get around to it, but at 67 I may not have much time (or
incentive)... Besides, programming is only a hobby for me, as I'm long
retired.
-- Dave