11.11 Slashes in Shell Scripts

Unpatched Tru64 5.1 sh omits the last slash of command-line arguments that contain two trailing slashes:

$ echo / // /// //// .// //.
/ / // /// ./ //.
$ x=//
$ eval "echo \$x"
/
$ set -x
$ echo abc | tr -t ab //
+ echo abc
+ tr -t ab /
/bc

Unpatched Tru64 4.0 sh adds a slash after ‘"$var"’ if the variable is empty and the second double-quote is followed by a word that begins and ends with slash:

$ sh -xc 'p=; echo "$p"/ouch/'
p=
+ echo //ouch/
//ouch/

However, our understanding is that patches are available, so perhaps it’s not worth worrying about working around these horrendous bugs.