yes, because the /sbin commands are symlinked from /usr/sbin; other than that, there should not be difference - in past the /sbin had static binaries.. I actually dont have any strong opinions about this order, dont mind either way.

IMHO symlinking of parts of (/usr)/sbin is bad there as it 'goes against tradition', and on a more practical side - despite unification of / and /usr in the past years, it is not hard to untie them so I can have my split-root setups with all of /usr on a separate dataset that's mounted later in boot - and content of /sbin alone facilitates that. I too do not have an opinion which should be first in PATH, just that it should be same to avoid surprises in case of conflicts. Likely /usr/sbin might provide better-tuned builds and /sbin might be more generic (so later in path).

sh/ksh case can end with ;; to end clause and ;& is marking the end of the clause but the execution will continue with next list. Same as break and missing break in C switch statement.

Every day there's something new ;) to learn.

Well, if all those other shells do not barf on this - LGTM ;)

yep, bash/ksh/zsh (and as our sh/jsh are actually ksh) all implement this and testing did confirm it does work as described in manual.

yes, I did already.. the currently /etc/ksh.kshrc deals does implement the path shortening for sh/ksh based shells; for bash there is another option, instead of \w we can use \W:

tsoome@beastie:common$ typeset +x PS1="\u@\h:\w\$ "

tsoome@beastie:/code/illumos-gate/usr/src/lib/libzfs/common$ typeset +x PS1="\u@\h:\W\$ "

tsoome@beastie:common$ 
now the \W will just leave the last component of the path and therefore will keep the prompt short. note both ksh/bash support ${PWD##*/} which will give same result as bash \W - but for bash I would rather use \W instead. So, do you think we should use \W to manage the lenght of the prompt for bash?
about issues - should 6723 just be marked as duplicate of 2931? or link them as related and have this update marked to solve both?

I still think the sample file would be nice, but made sure the samples are commented out.

well, the typeset -x is export so in that sense the result would be the same, in that sense there is no real reason, I just did like this form:)

OK, but last I looked, the "typeset" command is not POSIX shell language (it's specific to ksh)

while "export VAR=value" is standard.  Those of us who might like ksh to be optional someday

might appreciate trying to stick to POSIX shell language.  Yes, I know, there's a lot of

ksh-specific stuff around, so this may be a battle that's already lost ;)

Yea, missed that one - as this .profile will not set anything, we have no knowledge what the values will be. So I did change the comment, does it look better this way?

I guess so.

Though I thought we were trying to get rid of the suggestions to put /usr/gnu/bin at the front...

:D well, if the user is already on editing .profile, the decision is probably done anyhow;) so removing the sample wont really change it. And at the end of the day, removing examples is no replacement for improving the tools;)