Xref: utzoo comp.unix.i386:4693 comp.unix.xenix:11337
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Layers
Keywords: SCO UNIX Layers Ersatz Job Contrl
Message-ID: <3289@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 2 May 90 17:53:51 GMT
References: <940@s8.Morgan.COM> <263E2DB2.12E0@marob.masa.com>
Followup-To: comp.unix.i386
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 20

>BTW, while running 'strings' on ksh to find the version number, I
>noticed that the pathnames of many standard utilities are hard-coded into
>the binary.  Why would ksh would want to call cc, make, sed, grep, who,
>pr, mail or ls?

Because you typed "cc", "make", etc. to it....

>Any why would it care about date, mv, rm, or chmod
>when these are just wrappers around system calls?

Many modern UNIX shells have mechanisms to avoid doing a full search of
PATH every time you run a command.  The S5 Bourne shell, the C shell,
and the Korn shell all seem to have their own different ones; "ksh" uses
aliases.  It supports "tracked aliases"; this means that the first time
you run a command, it does a path search, and then aliases that
command's name to the full path of the copy it found, so that subsequent
executions go straight to the right path.

As I remember, the Korn shell also includes some pre-defined aliases of
that sort, and those are the strings you found.