Re: sed --posix does not catch incomplete arguments

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Eric,

> About the only portable alternative that I could think of for a makefile
> would be to use multiple echo (or printf) into a temporary file, then
> use sed -f file, rather than relying on multiple -e.

The makefile can also construct a newline as contents of a shell variable.
In Makefile syntax:

  stmt=`echo "nl='"; echo "'"`; eval "$$stmt"; : | sed -e "1{$${nl}}"

> The Austin group 
> take this morning is that allowing -e fragments is a useful addition for
> the next revision of the standard, but that there are still
> implementations today (like AIX) that don't support it now, so it will
> be several years before sed -e 1{ -e } is standardized.

Thanks for bringing it up with the Austin group!

Bruno