[Hampshire] Bash -> Dash for sh. Is it safe?

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Author: Dr Adam J Trickett
Date:  
To: Hants LUG
Subject: [Hampshire] Bash -> Dash for sh. Is it safe?

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Hi,

I've seen a few reference to using dash rather than bash as the
symlink for sh rather than bash. Dash is mostly POSIX compliant,
and very much smaller than bash so scripts without bashism
run quite a bit faster.

I've also seen people complain recently that a some scripts
on an ubuntu box break because though they called for /bin/sh
they were relying on a Bashism. I'm not sure which ubuntu
versions have taken the switch, or if it's the default
now.

I'm not proposing to changing my login shell to dash, but
have anyone tried changing sh to dash and what kind of
problems did you see? I also think running my scripts
under other Bourne/POSIX shells is good practice for me
as well.

--
Adam Trickett
Overton, HANTS, UK

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
    -- Albert Einstein