KSH93

[Jon A. Miller]

My service provider SA informs me the HP does
not supply a KSH93 shell for HP UX11, and they
must attempt to compile an ATT version.
Is this true? and if so; can someone explain
the logic/reasoning?
thanx

[Curtis Larson]

try using /usr/dt/bin/dtksh

[Jon A. Miller]

thanx for the reply, but I don't believe
dtksh is ksh93 compliant either...

[Patrick Wallek]

Pardon my ignorance here, but what is ksh93 and how is it different from the normal ksh?

[Curtis Larson]

beleive what you want, but dtksh is based on ksh-93 and supports all the commands and features provided by ksh-93. so why don't you give it a try?

Which features of ksh-93 do you think are not supported by dtksh?

[Jon A. Miller]

The 'standard' release of KSH from HP is
ksh88 compliant, and not ksh93. As a
development group we asked service provider for a ksh93 compliant shell. The responses are noted in my original question.
-If anyone can further enlighten us as to any
errors in our conclusion, or awareness of
the situation; please do so, we are not a
'sensitive bunch'
thanx

[Patrick Wallek]

Here are a couple of documents I found in the TKB concerning ksh93:

http://us-support2.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=e5fa035d11c1f6f45c/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000024627054

Try this one first - it references dtksh - http://us-support2.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=e5fa035d11c1f6f45c/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000024603638

[Curtis Larson]

patrick if you do a what on /usr/bin/ksh you'll see that its version is 11/16/88. That is the 88 version of ksh. Well, programming languages have improved a bit since then so they have incorporated these in features in newer version. that is where ksh-93 comes from. You do a what on /usr/dt/bin/dtksh and you'll see that its version is 12/28/93.

Things supported on ksh-93 include:
associative arrarys, passing array reference to functions, name references, floating point arithmetic, new parameter expansions (${param:offset:length} up to length characters of varname starting at offset), pattern matching consturct [:character_class:].

some of the obsolete features include using echo instead of print (oh yeah a printf for formatted output in ksh-93), test and [ should now use [[...]] syntax, string compare inside [[ is now ==.

of course there are many more then this.

[Jon A. Miller]

Patrick: thanx for the TKB references;
1)HP UX11 is still ksh88 and
2)dtksh is a '...derived product of ksh93'.

I guess my original question still remains
why HP would not have a 'fully' ksh93 compliant ksh available after so many years?

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Jon,

I don't know that anyone other than HP can answer your question. I'd be tempted to place a software call to HP and ask about it, and maybe see if you can get it as an enhancement request to a future version of HP-UX.

I looked at the HP-UX Software Archive and couldn't find any reference to ksh93.

I don't know what else you can do at this point.

[Bruce Regittko_1]

Hi Jon,

I would guess that HP doesn't include a ksh93 version of the Korn shell for a combination fo the following reasons. One is that the Korn shell is proprietary and a royalty must be paid. another is that HP probably feels that it is not necessary since the POSIX shell is the default shell. Additionally, most people who would have desired the enhanced capabilities probably have migrated to Perl, which has even more features and is faster.

--Bruce

[Curtis Larson]

well, if your going to dismiss every derived software product as not fully compliant, then there isn't any ansi compiler, netscape doesn't make a browser, solaris isn't unix, and mircosoft isn't, well you get the idea.

even if you find a version which meets your definition of "fully compliant", it well only be so till its next patch.

But, I do agree with you the programming environment provided by hp is appalling. ksh-88, does anyone still use hardware purchased in 1988? If they do hp no longer supports it that is for sure. And for that matter, what is with the unsupported version of perl they deliver( version 4). When is the last time you wrote something compliant with perl4? can't boot from a kernel on a journaled file system. The only reason hfs isn't obsolete is you have to have it for the kernel. how many meg of memory is needed to boot their support cd? How many meg of memory can it address?

HP does produce quality hardware, but they only play catch up to the other vendors when it comes to software.

[Jon A. Miller]

Bruce:
Thanx for providing a business rational of the situation, not that I agree, but I can understand.

Curtis:
Your are correct there are no absolutes in
compliance issues.

To all who have responded, our 1st time on a HP forum has been a good experience. You have provided information that has enlightened us.
Thank you all!