Linux and the Unix Philosophy

ble to make a shell script nonportable by design, but such instances are rare

and are usually not encouraged.

Shell scripts also tend to lack the stigma of “ownership” commonly associ

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ated with C source code. People rarely become protective of them. Since they

are plainly visible to everyone, no one considers it his or her corporate duty to

protect their contents. Still, a measure of caution is in order here. Copyright

laws in the United States and other countries provide protection for shell

scripts. Whether one would want to copyright a shell script is a matter for the

lawyers.

5.2.4 Resist the desire to rewrite shell scripts in C

The chapter on portability ...