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The small set of tools you can expect to find on any machine can still include some limitations you should be aware of.
$ gawk 'function die () { print "Aaaaarg!" }
BEGIN { die () }'
gawk: cmd. line:2: BEGIN { die () }
gawk: cmd. line:2: ^ parse error
$ gawk 'function die () { print "Aaaaarg!" }
BEGIN { die() }'
Aaaaarg!
Posix says that if a program contains only `BEGIN' actions, and
contains no instances of getline, then the program merely
executes the actions without reading input. However, traditional Awk
implementations (such as Solaris 10 awk) read and discard
input in this case. Portable scripts can redirect input from
/dev/null to work around the problem. For example:
awk 'BEGIN {print "hello world"}' </dev/null
Posix says that in an `END' action, `$NF' (and presumably, `$1') retain their value from the last record read, if no intervening `getline' occurred. However, some implementations (such as Solaris 10 `/usr/bin/awk', `nawk', or Darwin `awk') reset these variables. A workaround is to use an intermediate variable prior to the `END' block. For example:
$ cat end.awk
{ tmp = $1 }
END { print "a", $1, $NF, "b", tmp }
$ echo 1 | awk -f end.awk
a b 1
$ echo 1 | gawk -f end.awk
a 1 1 b 1
If you want your program to be deterministic, don't depend on for
on arrays:
$ cat for.awk
END {
arr["foo"] = 1
arr["bar"] = 1
for (i in arr)
print i
}
$ gawk -f for.awk </dev/null
foo
bar
$ nawk -f for.awk </dev/null
bar
foo
Some Awk implementations, such as HP-UX 11.0's native one, mishandle anchors:
$ echo xfoo | $AWK '/foo|^bar/ { print }'
$ echo bar | $AWK '/foo|^bar/ { print }'
bar
$ echo xfoo | $AWK '/^bar|foo/ { print }'
xfoo
$ echo bar | $AWK '/^bar|foo/ { print }'
bar
Either do not depend on such patterns (i.e., use `/^(.*foo|bar)/', or use a simple test to reject such implementations.
On `ia64-hp-hpux11.23', Awk mishandles printf conversions
after %u:
$ awk 'BEGIN { printf "%u %d\n", 0, -1 }'
0 0
AIX version 5.2 has an arbitrary limit of 399 on the length of regular expressions and literal strings in an Awk program.
Traditional Awk implementations derived from Unix version 7, such as
Solaris /bin/awk, have many limitations and do not
conform to Posix. Nowadays AC_PROG_AWK (see Particular Programs) finds you an Awk that doesn't have these problems, but if
for some reason you prefer not to use AC_PROG_AWK you may need to
address them.
Traditional Awk does not support multidimensional arrays or user-defined functions.
Traditional Awk does not support the -v option. You can use
assignments after the program instead, e.g., $AWK '{print v
$1}' v=x; however, don't forget that such assignments are not
evaluated until they are encountered (e.g., after any BEGIN
action).
Traditional Awk does not support the keywords delete or do.
Traditional Awk does not support the expressions
a?b:c, !a, a^b,
or a^=b.
Traditional Awk does not support the predefined CONVFMT variable.
Traditional Awk supports only the predefined functions exp, index,
int, length, log, split, sprintf,
sqrt, and substr.
Traditional Awk getline is not at all compatible with Posix;
avoid it.
Traditional Awk has for (i in a) ... but no other uses of the
in keyword. For example, it lacks if (i in a) ....
In code portable to both traditional and modern Awk, FS must be a
string containing just one ordinary character, and similarly for the
field-separator argument to split.
Traditional Awk has a limit of 99 fields in a record. Since some Awk
implementations, like Tru64's, split the input even if you don't refer
to any field in the script, to circumvent this problem, set `FS'
to an unusual character and use split.
Traditional Awk has a limit of at most 99 bytes in a number formatted by
OFMT; for example, OFMT="%.300e"; print 0.1; typically
dumps core.
The original version of Awk had a limit of at most 99 bytes per
split field, 99 bytes per substr substring, and 99 bytes
per run of non-special characters in a printf format, but these
bugs have been fixed on all practical hosts that we know of.
AC_PROG_CC_C_O.
When a compilation such as `cc -o foo foo.c' fails, some compilers (such as cds on Reliant Unix) leave a foo.o.
HP-UX cc doesn't accept .S files to preprocess and assemble. `cc -c foo.S' appears to succeed, but in fact does nothing.
The default executable, produced by `cc foo.c', can be
The C compiler's traditional name is cc, but other names like
gcc are common. Posix 1003.1-2001 specifies the
name c99, but older Posix editions specified
c89 and anyway these standard names are rarely used in
practice. Typically the C compiler is invoked from makefiles that use
`$(CC)', so the value of the `CC' make variable selects the
compiler name.
Some cp implementations (e.g., BSD/OS 4.2) do not allow trailing slashes at the end of nonexistent destination directories. To avoid this problem, omit the trailing slashes. For example, use `cp -R source /tmp/newdir' rather than `cp -R source /tmp/newdir/' if /tmp/newdir does not exist.
The ancient SunOS 4 cp does not support -f, although its mv does.
Traditionally, file timestamps had 1-second resolution, and `cp
-p' copied the timestamps exactly. However, many modern file systems
have timestamps with 1-nanosecond resolution. Unfortunately, `cp
-p' implementations truncate timestamps when copying files, so this
can result in the destination file appearing to be older than the
source. The exact amount of truncation depends on the resolution of
the system calls that cp uses; traditionally this was
utime, which has 1-second resolution, but some newer
cp implementations use utimes, which has
1-microsecond resolution. These newer implementations include GNU
Core Utilities 5.0.91 or later, and Solaris 8 (sparc) patch 109933-02 or
later. Unfortunately as of January 2006 there is still no system
call to set timestamps to the full nanosecond resolution.
Bob Proulx notes that `cp -p' always tries to copy ownerships. But whether it actually does copy ownerships or not is a system dependent policy decision implemented by the kernel. If the kernel allows it then it happens. If the kernel does not allow it then it does not happen. It is not something cp itself has control over.
In Unix System V any user can chown files to any other user, and System V also has a non-sticky /tmp. That probably derives from the heritage of System V in a business environment without hostile users. BSD changed this to be a more secure model where only root can chown files and a sticky /tmp is used. That undoubtedly derives from the heritage of BSD in a campus environment.
GNU/Linux and Solaris by default follow BSD, but
can be configured to allow a System V style chown. On the
other hand, HP-UX follows System V, but can
be configured to use the modern security model and disallow
chown. Since it is an administrator-configurable parameter
you can't use the name of the kernel as an indicator of the behavior.
$ uname -a
OSF1 medusa.sis.pasteur.fr V5.1 732 alpha
$ date "+%s"
%s
Some implementations, such as Tru64's, fail when comparing to
/dev/null. Use an empty file instead.
AS_DIRNAME (see Programming in M4sh). For example:
dir=`dirname "$file"` # This is not portable.
dir=`AS_DIRNAME(["$file"])` # This is more portable.
grep -E. Also, some traditional implementations do
not work on long input lines. To work around these problems, invoke
AC_PROG_EGREP and then use $EGREP.
Portable extended regular expressions should use `\' only to escape characters in the string `$()*+.?[\^{|'. For example, `\}' is not portable, even though it typically matches `}'.
The empty alternative is not portable. Use `?' instead. For instance with Digital Unix v5.0:
> printf "foo\n|foo\n" | $EGREP '^(|foo|bar)$'
|foo
> printf "bar\nbar|\n" | $EGREP '^(foo|bar|)$'
bar|
> printf "foo\nfoo|\n|bar\nbar\n" | $EGREP '^(foo||bar)$'
foo
|bar
$EGREP also suffers the limitations of grep.
Don't use length, substr, match and index.
expr '' \| ''
Posix 1003.2-1992 returns the empty string for this case, but traditional Unix returns `0' (Solaris is one such example). In Posix 1003.1-2001, the specification was changed to match traditional Unix's behavior (which is bizarre, but it's too late to fix this). Please note that the same problem does arise when the empty string results from a computation, as in:
expr bar : foo \| foo : bar
Avoid this portability problem by avoiding the empty string.
Portable expr regular expressions should not begin with `^'. Patterns are automatically anchored so leading `^' is not needed anyway.
The Posix standard is ambiguous as to whether `expr 'a' : '\(b\)'' outputs `0' or the empty string. In practice, it outputs the empty string on most platforms, but portable scripts should not assume this. For instance, the QNX 4.25 native expr returns `0'.
One might think that a way to get a uniform behavior would be to use the empty string as a default value:
expr a : '\(b\)' \| ''
Unfortunately this behaves exactly as the original expression; see the expr (`|') entry for more information.
Some ancient expr implementations (e.g., SunOS 4 expr and Solaris 8 /usr/ucb/expr) have a silly length limit that causes expr to fail if the matched substring is longer than 120 bytes. In this case, you might want to fall back on `echo|sed' if expr fails. Nowadays this is of practical importance only for the rare installer who mistakenly puts /usr/ucb before /usr/bin in PATH.
On Mac OS X 10.4, expr mishandles the pattern `[^-]' in some cases. For example, the command
expr Xpowerpc-apple-darwin8.1.0 : 'X[^-]*-[^-]*-\(.*\)'
outputs `apple-darwin8.1.0' rather than the correct `darwin8.1.0'. This particular case can be worked around by substituting `[^--]' for `[^-]'.
Don't leave, there is some more!
The QNX 4.25 expr, in addition of preferring `0' to the empty string, has a funny behavior in its exit status: it's always 1 when parentheses are used!
$ val=`expr 'a' : 'a'`; echo "$?: $val"
0: 1
$ val=`expr 'a' : 'b'`; echo "$?: $val"
1: 0
$ val=`expr 'a' : '\(a\)'`; echo "?: $val"
1: a
$ val=`expr 'a' : '\(b\)'`; echo "?: $val"
1: 0
In practice this can be a big problem if you are ready to catch failures of expr programs with some other method (such as using sed), since you may get twice the result. For instance
$ expr 'a' : '\(a\)' || echo 'a' | sed 's/^\(a\)$/\1/'
outputs `a' on most hosts, but `aa' on QNX 4.25. A simple workaround consists of testing expr and using a variable set to expr or to false according to the result.
Tru64 expr incorrectly treats the result as a number, if it can be interpreted that way:
$ expr 00001 : '.*\(...\)'
1
grep -F. Also, some traditional implementations do
not work on long input lines. To work around these problems, invoke
AC_PROG_FGREP and then use $FGREP.
The replacement of `{}' is guaranteed only if the argument is exactly {}, not if it's only a part of an argument. For instance on DU, and HP-UX 10.20 and HP-UX 11:
$ touch foo
$ find . -name foo -exec echo "{}-{}" \;
{}-{}
while GNU find reports `./foo-./foo'.
Some of the options required by Posix are not portable in practice.
Don't use `grep -q' to suppress output, because many grep
implementations (e.g., Solaris) do not support -q.
Don't use `grep -s' to suppress output either, because Posix
says -s does not suppress output, only some error messages;
also, the -s option of traditional grep behaved
like -q does in most modern implementations. Instead,
redirect the standard output and standard error (in case the file
doesn't exist) of grep to /dev/null. Check the exit
status of grep to determine whether it found a match.
Some traditional grep implementations do not work on long
input lines. On AIX the default grep silently truncates long
lines on the input before matching.
Also, many implementations do not support multiple regexps
with -e: they either reject -e entirely (e.g., Solaris)
or honor only the last pattern (e.g., IRIX 6.5 and NeXT). To
work around these problems, invoke AC_PROG_GREP and then use
$GREP.
Another possible workaround for the multiple -e problem is to separate the patterns by newlines, for example:
grep 'foo
bar' in.txt
except that this fails with traditional grep implementations and with OpenBSD 3.8 grep.
Traditional grep implementations (e.g., Solaris) do not
support the -E or -F options. To work around these
problems, invoke AC_PROG_EGREP and then use $EGREP, and
similarly for AC_PROG_FGREP and $FGREP. Even if you are
willing to require support for Posix grep, your script should
not use both -E and -F, since Posix does not allow
this combination.
Portable grep regular expressions should use `\' only to escape characters in the string `$()*.0123456789[\^{}'. For example, alternation, `\|', is common but Posix does not require its support in basic regular expressions, so it should be avoided in portable scripts. Solaris and HP-UX grep do not support it. Similarly, the following escape sequences should also be avoided: `\<', `\>', `\+', `\?', `\`', `\'', `\B', `\b', `\S', `\s', `\W', and `\w'.
Posix does not specify the behavior of grep on binary files. An example where this matters is using BSD grep to search text that includes embedded ANSI escape sequences for colored output to terminals (`\033[m' is the sequence to restore normal output); the behavior depends on whether input is seekable:
$ printf 'esc\033[mape\n' > sample
$ grep . sample
Binary file sample matches
$ cat sample | grep .
escape
cat >file <<'EOF'
1 x
2 y
EOF
cat file | join file -
Use `join - file' instead.
For versions of the DJGPP before 2.04,
ln emulates symbolic links
to executables by generating a stub that in turn calls the real
program. This feature also works with nonexistent files like in the
Posix spec. So `ln -s file link' generates link.exe,
which attempts to call file.exe if run. But this feature only
works for executables, so `cp -p' is used instead for these
systems. DJGPP versions 2.04 and later have full support
for symbolic links.
On ancient hosts, `ls foo' sent the diagnostic `foo not found'
to standard output if foo did not exist. Hence a shell command
like `sources=`ls *.c 2>/dev/null`' did not always work, since it
was equivalent to `sources='*.c not found'' in the absence of
`.c' files. This is no longer a practical problem, since current
ls implementations send diagnostics to standard error.
AS_MKDIR_P(file-name) (see Programming in M4sh)
or AC_PROG_MKDIR_P (see Particular Programs).
Combining the -m and -p options, as in `mkdir -m go-w -p dir', often leads to trouble. FreeBSD mkdir incorrectly attempts to change the permissions of dir even if it already exists. HP-UX 11.23 and IRIX 6.5 mkdir often assign the wrong permissions to any newly-created parents of dir.
Posix does not clearly specify whether `mkdir -p foo' should succeed when foo is a symbolic link to an already-existing directory. The GNU Core Utilities 5.1.0 mkdir succeeds, but Solaris mkdir fails.
Traditional mkdir -p implementations suffer from race conditions.
For example, if you invoke mkdir -p a/b and mkdir -p a/c
at the same time, both processes might detect that a is missing,
one might create a, then the other might try to create a
and fail with a File exists diagnostic. The GNU Core
Utilities (`fileutils' version 4.1), FreeBSD 5.0,
NetBSD 2.0.2, and OpenBSD 2.4 are known to be
race-free when two processes invoke mkdir -p simultaneously, but
earlier versions are vulnerable. Solaris mkdir is still
vulnerable as of Solaris 10, and other traditional Unix systems are
probably vulnerable too. This possible race is harmful in parallel
builds when several Make rules call mkdir -p to
construct directories. You may use
install-sh -d as a safe replacement, provided this script is
recent enough; the copy shipped with Autoconf 2.60 and Automake 1.10 is
OK, but copies from older versions are vulnerable.
Here is sample code to create a new temporary directory safely:
# Create a temporary directory $tmp in $TMPDIR (default /tmp).
# Use mktemp if possible; otherwise fall back on mkdir,
# with $RANDOM to make collisions less likely.
: ${TMPDIR=/tmp}
{
tmp=`
(umask 077 && mktemp -d "$TMPDIR/fooXXXXXX") 2>/dev/null
` &&
test -n "$tmp" && test -d "$tmp"
} || {
tmp=$TMPDIR/foo$$-$RANDOM
(umask 077 && mkdir "$tmp")
} || exit $?
Moving individual files between file systems is portable (it was in Unix version 6), but it is not always atomic: when doing `mv new existing', there's a critical section where neither the old nor the new version of existing actually exists.
On some systems moving files from /tmp can sometimes cause undesirable (but perfectly valid) warnings, even if you created these files. This is because /tmp belongs to a group that ordinary users are not members of, and files created in /tmp inherit the group of /tmp. When the file is copied, mv issues a diagnostic without failing:
$ touch /tmp/foo
$ mv /tmp/foo .
error-->mv: ./foo: set owner/group (was: 100/0): Operation not permitted
$ echo $?
0
$ ls foo
foo
This annoying behavior conforms to Posix, unfortunately.
Moving directories across mount points is not portable, use cp and rm.
DOS variants cannot rename or remove open files, and do not
support commands like `mv foo bar >foo', even though this is
perfectly portable among Posix hosts.
This problem no longer exists in Mac OS X 10.4.3.
It is not portable to invoke rm without operands. For example, on many systems `rm -f -r' (with no other arguments) silently succeeds without doing anything, but it fails with a diagnostic on NetBSD 2.0.2.
A file might not be removed even if its parent directory is writable and searchable. Many Posix hosts cannot remove a mount point, a named stream, a working directory, or a last link to a file that is being executed.
DOS variants cannot rename or remove open files, and do not
support commands like `rm foo >foo', even though this is
perfectly portable among Posix hosts.
Avoid empty patterns within parentheses (i.e., `\(\)'). Posix does not require support for empty patterns, and Unicos 9 sed rejects them.
Unicos 9 sed loops endlessly on patterns like `.*\n.*'.
Sed scripts should not use branch labels longer than 7 characters and should not contain comments. HP-UX sed has a limit of 99 commands (not counting `:' commands) and 48 labels, which can not be circumvented by using more than one script file. It can execute up to 19 reads with the `r' command per cycle. Solaris /usr/ucb/sed rejects usages that exceed an limit of about 6000 bytes for the internal representation of commands.
Avoid redundant `;', as some sed implementations, such as NetBSD 1.4.2's, incorrectly try to interpret the second `;' as a command:
$ echo a | sed 's/x/x/;;s/x/x/'
sed: 1: "s/x/x/;;s/x/x/": invalid command code ;
Input should not have unreasonably long lines, since some sed implementations have an input buffer limited to 4000 bytes.
Portable sed regular expressions should use `\' only to escape characters in the string `$()*.0123456789[\^n{}'. For example, alternation, `\|', is common but Posix does not require its support, so it should be avoided in portable scripts. Solaris sed does not support alternation; e.g., `sed '/a\|b/d'' deletes only lines that contain the literal string `a|b'. Similarly, `\+' and `\?' should be avoided.
Anchors (`^' and `$') inside groups are not portable.
Nested parentheses in patterns (e.g., `\(\(a*\)b*)\)') are quite portable to current hosts, but was not supported by some ancient sed implementations like SVR3.
Some sed implementations, e.g., Solaris, restrict the special role of the asterisk to one-character regular expressions. This may lead to unexpected behavior:
$ echo '1*23*4' | /usr/bin/sed 's/\(.\)*/x/g'
x2x4
$ echo '1*23*4' | /usr/xpg4/bin/sed 's/\(.\)*/x/g'
x
The -e option is mostly portable. However, its argument cannot start with `a', `c', or `i', as this runs afoul of a Tru64 5.1 bug. Also, its argument cannot be empty, as this fails on AIX 5.3. Some people prefer to use `-e':
sed -e 'command-1' \
-e 'command-2'
as opposed to the equivalent:
sed '
command-1
command-2
'
The following usage is sometimes equivalent:
sed 'command-1;command-2'
but Posix says that this use of a semicolon has undefined effect if command-1's verb is `{', `a', `b', `c', `i', `r', `t', `w', `:', or `#', so you should use semicolon only with simple scripts that do not use these verbs.
Commands inside { } brackets are further restricted. Posix says that they cannot be preceded by addresses, `!', or `;', and that each command must be followed immediately by a newline, without any intervening blanks or semicolons. The closing bracket must be alone on a line, other than white space preceding or following it.
Contrary to yet another urban legend, you may portably use `&' in
the replacement part of the s command to mean “what was
matched”. All descendants of Unix version 7 sed
(at least; we
don't have first hand experience with older sed implementations) have
supported it.
Posix requires that you must not have any white space between `!' and the following command. It is OK to have blanks between the address and the `!'. For instance, on Solaris:
$ echo "foo" | sed -n '/bar/ ! p'
error-->Unrecognized command: /bar/ ! p
$ echo "foo" | sed -n '/bar/! p'
error-->Unrecognized command: /bar/! p
$ echo "foo" | sed -n '/bar/ !p'
foo
Posix also says that you should not combine `!' and `;'. If you use `!', it is best to put it on a command that is delimited by newlines rather than `;'.
Also note that Posix requires that the `b', `t', `r', and `w' commands be followed by exactly one space before their argument. On the other hand, no white space is allowed between `:' and the subsequent label name.
If a sed script is specified on the command line and ends in an `a', `c', or `i' command, the last line of inserted text should be followed by a newline. Otherwise some sed implementations (e.g., OpenBSD 3.9) do not append a newline to the inserted text.
Many sed implementations (e.g., MacOS X 10.4, OpenBSD 3.9, Solaris 10 /usr/ucb/sed) strip leading white space from the text of `a', `c', and `i' commands. Prepend a backslash to work around this incompatibility with Posix:
$ echo flushleft | sed 'a\
> indented
> '
flushleft
indented
$ echo foo | sed 'a\
> \ indented
> '
flushleft
indented
Posix requires that with an empty regular expression, the last non-empty regular expression from either an address specification or substitution command is applied. However, busybox 1.6.1 complains when using a substitution command with a replacement containing a back-reference to an empty regular expression; the workaround is repeating the regular expression.
$ echo abc | busybox sed '/a\(b\)c/ s//\1/'
sed: No previous regexp.
$ echo abc | busybox sed '/a\(b\)c/ s/a\(b\)c/\1/'
b
s/keep me/kept/g # a
t end # b
s/.*/deleted/g # c
:end # d
on
delete me # 1
delete me # 2
keep me # 3
delete me # 4
you get
deleted
delete me
kept
deleted
instead of
deleted
deleted
kept
deleted
Why? When processing line 1, (c) matches, therefore sets the `t' flag, and the output is produced. When processing line 2, the `t' flag is still set (this is the bug). Command (a) fails to match, but sed is not supposed to clear the `t' flag when a substitution fails. Command (b) sees that the flag is set, therefore it clears it, and jumps to (d), hence you get `delete me' instead of `deleted'. When processing line (3), `t' is clear, (a) matches, so the flag is set, hence (b) clears the flags and jumps. Finally, since the flag is clear, line 4 is processed properly.
There are two things one should remember about `t' in sed. Firstly, always remember that `t' jumps if some substitution succeeded, not only the immediately preceding substitution. Therefore, always use a fake `t clear' followed by a `:clear' on the next line, to reset the `t' flag where needed.
Secondly, you cannot rely on sed to clear the flag at each new cycle.
One portable implementation of the script above is:
t clear
:clear
s/keep me/kept/g
t end
s/.*/deleted/g
:end
utime or
utimes system call, which can result in the same kind of
timestamp truncation problems that `cp -p' has.
On ancient BSD systems, touch or any command that results in an empty file does not update the timestamps, so use a command like echo as a workaround. Also, GNU touch 3.16r (and presumably all before that) fails to work on SunOS 4.1.3 when the empty file is on an NFS-mounted 4.2 volume. However, these problems are no longer of practical concern.