Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!imagen!atari!apratt
From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: gulam bug
Message-ID: <1658@atari.UUCP>
Date: 23 Aug 89 17:42:37 GMT
References: <DENNIS.89Aug22143938@marge.math.binghamton.edu>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 26

dennis@marge.math.binghamton.edu (dennis pixton) writes:
>I've noticed several problems with redirection in gulam (1.03.04.05) [...]
>I wrote a trivial program, args.prg (compiled with mwc) to dump out its
>args, the environment, and whether the file handles are ttys.  When I run 
>	args a b > junk
> I then simply *rename* args.prg to shar.prg and run
>	shar a b > junk
>This time the output is to the screen [...]

Gulam has a serious bug in the code for launching programs.  There is a
table of the internal commands, and flags telling how to handle the
argument list for each.  Gulam looks your input up in this table, and,
in the case of an external command, won't find a match.  However, the
flags of the last internal command it looked at will be used to
parse your arguments!  Some flags mean "Don't expand wildcards" and
others mean "don't do anything."  I happen to have the source,
so I fixed this problem back in March, but I don't know if the
official types have noticed the bug yet.

There are other bugs in redirection, notably when you use shell_p to
exec a program and redirect its output.  Gulam is the shell I hate to
love: it's too good to throw out, and yet so bad in some ways.

============================================
Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt