Quoting the documentation of wait:
> * For POSIX compatibility, wait also works when it cannot find a
> block. In that case, all the options are still supported and have the
> same effect, but the rest of the command line is interpreted as
> pids... arguments and wait does not execute into a program; instead, it
> exits with a conforming exit code.
It's therefore quite surprising that this doesn't actually happen if
EXECLINE_STRICT is set in the environment, which it may very well be in
the likely case that wait is invoked from an execline script:
wait: fatal: unquoted argument 1008 at block 1 position 0
I think the POSIX compatibility of wait should not vary depending on the
value of an execline environment variable. I think it would be ideal if
this were fixed without unsetting EXECLINE_STRICT in the environment in
the case where wait execs, because that would also be very surprising.
Received on Mon Mar 09 2026 - 16:34:46 CET