Christos Zoulas wrote:
It would be good to stop using backquotes for command substitution at some point. We are requiring ksh for this script anyway...
The script does not require ksh; it tests dynamically for ksh extensions and uses them only if present. Also, the script uses backquotes for portability to Solaris /bin/sh. A comment in the script says: # For portability to Solaris 9 /bin/sh this script avoids some POSIX # features and common extensions, such as $(...) (which works sometimes # but not others), $((...)), and $10. The same problem occurs with Solaris 10 /bin/sh, which Oracle says they'll support until January 2021. Solaris 10 typically comes with other shells too, but we might as well continue to support /bin/sh if it's easy. I think Solaris finally switched to a POSIX-compatible /bin/sh in Solaris 11.