The "exp" builtin is undocumented, non-standard and not very useful.
If exp's return value is not used, something like
VAR=$(exp EXPRESSION)
is equivalent to
VAR=$((EXPRESSION))
except that errors in the expression are fatal and quoting special
characters is not needed in the latter case.
If exp's return value is used, something like
if exp EXPRESSION >/dev/null
can be replaced by
if [ $((EXPRESSION)) -ne 0 ]
with similar differences.
The exp-run showed that "let" is close enough to bash's and ksh's builtin
that removing it would break a few ports. Therefore, "let" remains in 9.x.
PR: bin/104432
Exp-run done by: pav (with some other sh(1) changes)
Note that this only applies to variables that are actually used.
Things like (0 && unsetvar) do not cause an error.
Exp-run done by: pav (with some other sh(1) changes)
New features:
* proper lazy evaluation of || and &&
* ?: ternary operator
* executable is considerably smaller (8K on i386) because lex and yacc are
no longer used
Differences from dash:
* arith_t instead of intmax_t
* imaxdiv() not used
* unset or null variables default to 0
* let/exp builtin (undocumented, will probably be removed later)
Obtained from: dash