Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell Subject: Re: Background writes in csh Message-ID: <1990Sep24.225118.9743@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> Date: 24 Sep 90 22:51:18 GMT References: <1990Sep19.203803.25798@cs.umn.edu> <1990Sep20.185147.14158@ping.uucp> Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto Lines: 32 In article jbw@bucsf.bu.edu (Joseph Wells) writes: > In article <1990Sep19.203803.25798@cs.umn.edu> (Paul Lindner) writes: > >I've been having a weird problem for the longest time. I like to use` > >aliases for my ls command: > > > > alias ls 'ls -FC \!* |more' > > > >This works fine, however sometimes it stops both tasks and puts them in > >the background, (this is on various Suns using csh and tcsh). Typing > >fg restarts the listing. This is really irritating, typing fg and all. > >[...] there is a known problem with Sun's csh >that causes this problem with pipelines in general. It's a race condition >during the setup of the pipeline by the csh. I suspect that less works >because it has a larger executable file and thus takes slightly longer for >SunOS to load. If this is indeed the case, we have a similar (though slightly different) problem on our Apollo's. (Processes which start and execute too fast sometimes terminate before the pipe is open. This results in no output when there should have been.) Anyway, try alias ls '(ls -FC \!* | more)' On our machines, running the whole thing in a subshell slows the process start up enough to allow the pipe to open in a timely fashion. No guarantees... just a thought. Marc R. Roussel mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca