Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!cs.umn.edu!sialis!quad!dts
From: dts@quad.sialis.com (David Sandberg)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: using cd command in a file
Message-ID: <680@quad.sialis.com>
Date: 27 May 91 21:26:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: quad.680
References: <1991May20.201923.27920@garfield.ncat.edu> <9105230900.22@rmkhome.UUCP> <1991May27.170005.12870@xzaphod.uucp>
Organization: Quadric Systems
Lines: 37

In article <1991May27.170005.12870@xzaphod.uucp> michael@xzaphod.UUCP (Michael R. Miller) writes:
>A script won't work because "cd" is a "built in" command in every shell
>I've heard of.

Whether cd is builtin or not has nothing to do with the reason a
"cd script" won't work.  Rather, it's because each process has
it's own idea of what is the current working directory.  New
processes inherit the current working directory from their parent
process, but not visa versa.

I also have to wonder why you made the above statement when, in
the very next paragraph, you described why a "cd script" doesn't
work in an essentially correct fashion.  But then you got screwed
up again and closed your article with the following:

>A modification to the script command could be:
>
>#!/bin/sh
>exec $SHELL -c "cd /me/A/B/C/D"

Huh?  I hate to tell you this, but your modified script won't
work any better than the original, since you're still running the
cd command in a subshell.  In fact, your suggested change makes
it worse if anything... it accomplishes the same thing as the
other (nothing, that is) and takes more processes to do it.

>If your shell supports aliases (/bin/ksh, /bin/csh, /bin/zsh), use it.

Agreed.  I said as much a week ago via email to the original
person who posed the question, thinking that it was too obvious
of a question to post a public reply to.  Heh... I should've
known better, I guess.

-- 
 \*=-      David Sandberg, dts@quad.sialis.com    ,=,       ,=,        -=*\
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