crontab entry environment variables [PSARC/2007/503 FastTrack timeout 09/10/2007]

[Don Cragun]

>Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:28:48 +0100
>From: Darren J Moffat <Darren.Moffat at sun.com>
>
>Bill Sommerfeld wrote:
>> Secondly: I think ALLOW_EXTENSIONS is not necessary.  This is another
>> case where an extension gives meaning to what was formerly a syntax
>> error. 
>> 
>> There appears to be extensive implementation experience with this sort
>> of extension on other platforms.  In the absence of evidence that there
>> is real crontab-manipulating code out there which will be broken by this
>> extension, I don't think we need the ALLOW_EXTENSIONS knob (except
>> *possibly* as a hedge to enable backport to an older release, and even
>> then I'm skeptical).
>
>I agree with this and I particularly like how your rationale makes the 
>distinction between full crontab file vs single entry.
>
>The only reason that I encouraged Chris to put in the knob was 
>"standards fear fud".   I think we need Don (or someone else intimate 
>with the standards that cover cron/crontab) to comment on this.   In 
>particular do the standards tests actually put "garbage" in the crontab 
>files and check that it fails ?

No, they don't.  My concern is how non-standard extensions in a shared
crontab file will affect applications installing crontab entries.

 - Don