bourne shell query

[Bob Goudreau]

In article <MEISSNER.90Sep6122432 at osf.osf.org>, meissner at osf.org
(Michael Meissner) writes:
> In article <1990Sep6.141133.3391 at usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
> chet at cwns1.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey) writes:
> 
> | In article <SCOTT.90Sep5124415 at tab29.larc.nasa.gov>
> | scott at tab29.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Yelich) writes:
> | 
> | >1) if [ "$1" = "$2" ]; then
> | >     echo "Yeas!"
> | >   else
> | >     echo "No-way!"
> | >   fi
> | 
> | What if $1 = '=' or '-t'?
> 
> The standard way of dealing with this is:
> 
> if [ x"$1" = x"$2" ]; then
> 	echo "Yeas!"
> else
> 	echo "No-way!"
> fi

Why is even the "x" method necessary?  My system's Bourne shell
(a port of V.3.2's sh) doesn't have any problem handling '=' or
'-t' in the example Scott Yelich describes above.  Is this something
AT&T fixed in the last couple of years?

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