Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!theory.tn.cornell.edu!christos
From: christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu (Christos S. Zoulas)
Subject: Re: ambiguous tty
Message-ID: <1991Mar29.020418.20224@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Sender: news@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: theory.tn.cornell.edu
Organization: Electrical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
References: <1991Mar28.192420.21918@citib.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1991 02:04:18 GMT

In article <1991Mar28.192420.21918@citib.com> scairns@citib.com (Scott Cairns) writes:
>Any ideas on what might be causing the following to happen?
>
>% rsh [any remote machine] pwd (or any other command)
>`tty`: Ambiguous
>
>(output from rsh command)
>%
>
>This is driving me nuts trying to find out who what or
>where is generating this.  The same problem exists for
>shell scripts executed from cron(8).

You have in your .cshrc something like:

if (`tty` == /dev/console) ....
or
set tty=`tty`

The `tty` expands to "Not a tty" in the famous globone() routine...
Unfortunately csh cannot handle multiple word word output from globone() 
and prints "Ambiguous". The simplest fix is to replace `tty` with "`tty`".

christos
-- 
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| Christos Zoulas         | 389 Theory Center, Electrical Engineering,   |
| christos@ee.cornell.edu | Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853.         |
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