Subject: bug#16282: revisit; reasoning for not using ENV vars to provide workarounds for POSIX limitations?

From: Linda Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2013 16:00:48 -0800

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Linda Walsh wrote:
> > Adding colons to the middle of the env var
>
> That would make the var impossible to use from the shell.
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That's what I thought you'd say -- meaning it would be well protected
against accidental usage.

However:

> env foobar::snore=1 |grep ::
foobar::snore=1

>
> And no matter what the name is, if it makes a standard
> utility behave in odd ways, it'll break scripts that
> don't expect the odd behavior.  That's the essential
> objection here.
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Having "rm -fr ." not follow historical depth-first behavior and,
out of sequence, check for a . is "odd behavior".

That's the essential objection -- and I'm trying to get back
the original behavior -- not ask for some new behavior.