In article <1146931718.961814.320370@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups .com>,
"James" <djcameron60616@yahoo.com> writes:
|>
|> I was writing a script yesterday that goes and searches popular shell
|> locations and within those all shells and reports ls -l output on them.
|>
|> What it produced concerned me. In two locations, the bourne sh has two
|> different file sizes.

On most Unices, 3-4 different sizes is normal!

The average Unix (not Linux) ships with anything from 2-5 different
'Bourne' shells, several of which are aliases for the system's preferred
Bourne-like shell, and most of which have subtly different behaviours.
/sbin/sh is often a statically linked 'true' Bourne shell, but I have
never found any consistency in the other ones.

Now, depending PRECISELY on how the system has been installed and
updated, it isn't uncommon for locations like /usr/bin/sh and /bin/sh
to get linked to or copied from different Bourne-like shells or
different versions of the same one.

Oh, joy.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.