Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utcs.toronto.edu!cks
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
From: cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann)
Subject: Re: ultrix 4.0 dbx
Message-ID: <1991Jan21.185205.26837@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: Ziebmef home away from home
References: <1991Jan15.145308.1436@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <10166@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Jan13.204300.20332@cimage.com> <1875@riscy.enet.dec.com>
Date: 21 Jan 91 23:52:05 GMT
Lines: 21

frank@croton.enet.dec.com (Frank Wortner) writes:
| >  Hell, the old dbx was too. Hasn't DEC noticed yet that "help" in dbx
| > fails silently (gee, what great help you have there), for example? 
| Works just fine for me.  The script output below is from my DECstation
| 3100 running
| ULTRIX 4.0 software.

 Bolstered by Frank's evidence that it did work, I went looking for
why it didn't work for me. It turns out I had $PAGER set to
	"less -d"
something that seems to work for everything else that uses $PAGER, but
fails for dbx (dbx may be doing an exec() call directly instead of
using system()). Well, now I feel embarassed, at least somewhat; but
I'm still annoyed dbx failed silently and didn't bother printing any
sort of error message.

--
"Anyone forging articles should be writing news software instead,
 if you get the headers right you're ahead of some implementations.
 Try writing a gateway, that'll test your skills."	- Ed Vielmetti
cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu	           ...!{utgpu,utzoo,watmath}!utgpu!cks