OT: broken/useless ansi - console driver??

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting Bob Stockler (Mon, 24 Oct 2005 17:33:32 -0400):
[...]
> | Now, if only system() would run /bin/sh rather than the incompatible
> | /u95/bin/sh instead.  (Regardless of the SHELL setting.)
>
> Why?  What's incompatible about it?  It's the latest version of
> the REAL KornShell (ksh93) and is (mostly) backwards commpatible
> with the Bourne shell when doing what the Bourne shell would do.

"echo -n" isn't supported, as it is in /bin/sh.  I'm sure there are
other minor differences like this as well.  This is probably because
/u95/bin/sh is really the Korn shell.  (Though it may behave differently
when run as "sh" rather than "ksh".  I haven't tested that.)

In a shell script, something like

    if [ $foo = bar ]

when foo is null will continue execution of the script, failing just the
above test, whereas /bin/sh will abort the entire script.  (True, one
can argue that the above line is "broken" because of the lack of quotes,
but it's a change in behavior nonetheless.

Create a script "/tmp/foo" as:

    if [ = bar ]
    then
        echo true
    else
        echo false
    fi
    echo The script has continued after the if.

Run it with "/bin/sh -c /tmp/foo" and "/u95/bin/sh -c /tmp/foo" and see
the difference.

The biggest change, however, is a script which executes a filePro program
(or any other program, I'm sure) on something other than the last line of
the script will cause the shell to exit upon receiving SIGINT, despite the
filePro program still running.

For example, if you have a menu script containing:

    ... some code ...
    $PFPROG/fp/dclerk filename -blah -blah -blah
    ... some more code ...

and you go press DEL/Ctrl-C at some point in dclerk, you will be returned
to the menu while dclerk is still running.

A simple demonstration.  Compare:

    /bin/sh -c "/appl/fp/dclerk ; echo"
and
    /u95/bin/sh -c "/appl/fp/dclerk ; echo"

Go into update mode on a record and press DEL/Ctrl-C.  A command prompt
will be displayed, along with the "DEL"/"Ctrl-C" prompt from dclerk if
running /u95/bin/sh, but will work as expected from /bin/sh.

I have verified that you can eliminate filePro from the equation via:

    /u95/bin/sh -c "vi ; echo"

Press DEL/Ctrl-C upon entering vi and watch the fun begin.  Compare
that to:

    /bin/sh -c "vi ; echo"

--
KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap: <g8ymh8uf001 at sneakemail.com>
http://www.hvcomputer.com
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