Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!melba.bby.oz.au!gnb From: gnb@melba.bby.oz.au (Gregory Bond) Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug Subject: Re: Bash-1.03 and exported PATH and history substitutions Message-ID: <8909190008.AA11764@baby.bby.oz> Date: 19 Sep 89 00:08:28 GMT Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Distribution: gnu Organization: GNUs Not Usenet Lines: 63 >From: bfox%aurel.caltech.edu@murtoa.cs.mu.oz (Brian Fox) >Subject: Bash-1.03 and exported PATH and history substitutions >Date: Fri, 15 Sep 89 09:07:19 H Date: Thu, 14 Sep 89 19:05:36 +1000 From: Gregory Bond 1) If you have a path line like PATH=:/bin:/usr/bin:~/bin:/usr/local/bin then when it is exported, the ~ is not expanded. This confuses subsequent invocations of /bin/sh or other programs that parse paths, for example make. Csh does expand components of the path it exports. Csh expands words beginning with whitespace. It does not have to expand the components of PATH, which are separated by colons. I could special case the PATH variable, which I think is ugly beyond belief. I agree, it's ugly. However, some method of expanding ~name in PATH-like variables would be nice. I think a general-purpose mechanism is required (for things like MANPATH etc), but I can't think of any clean way to do this expansion using expr or test etc, nor can I think of a method of constructing the PATH to expand at construction time. But some special operator is also ugly. Perhaps a string-concatenation operator: PATH=:/bin:/usr/bin: + ~/bin + :rest:of:path (In csh this happens because PATH is set using the csh space-separated syntax.) This one annoys me a lot: you can't add slashes with ^.^./^ as Yes, you can. Please try again. Also, please specify the version of Bash (or better yet, readline) which is giving you the problem. Um, red faces time. I checked this before posting, but must have checked on the 1.02 shell (where it definitly didn't work). I do not expect to spend any substantial amount of time hacking on the arcane and non-intuitive Csh !-style history interface. I have already spent too much time as it is. I have started looking at these problems and may eventually produce a better history editor. If you produce a better history editor, which is clean, and provides the same interface as mine, I will be more than happy to make it a part of the Readline library. Perhaps next time, you can spend the half hour adding the features that you want instead of me! Better in the sense of more like csh - for many years of habit die hard. (The number of times I type in bash and emacs to get file completion... ). Given the :gs stuff, the next thing I miss is & in the replacement string. I AM working on this, but it's a bit more than 1/2 hour for someone who doesn't know the code. This whole history mechanism is nasty twisted job, full of odd surprises and dark corners. I can well understand the desire to leave it behind. But, boy, I do love this shell. Greg. Bash fanatic.