Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcdchg!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: cd failure killing script [Re: Interactive 2.2 File zapper]
Message-ID: <1990Aug13.211716.5111@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 13 Aug 90 21:17:16 GMT
References: <1438@sixhub.UUCP> <26C2F1A0.205B@tct.uucp> <9118@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 19

In article <9118@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:
>In article <26C2F1A0.205B@tct.uucp> chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>: According to davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen):
>: >Yes, only ksh gives you the choice of catching the failure.
>: 
>: Bash 1.05 also continues after a "cd" failure.

>Likewise Perl.  The idiom to catch the failure is

>	chdir $dir || die "Can't cd to $dir: $!\n";

This is reasonable behaviour for perl since it doesn't claim any
compatibility with /bin/sh scripts.  Those other two mentioned above
will cause serious problems when executing scripts that are
perfectly valid for /bin/sh.  They could (should) have required a "set"
option to be done to make them operate differently.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us