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From: don@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Mysterious error message: scenario please
Message-ID: <1373@umd5>
Date: Sat, 22-Nov-86 20:57:57 EST
Article-I.D.: umd5.1373
Posted: Sat Nov 22 20:57:57 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Nov-86 07:46:55 EST
References: <1369@umd5> <1903@tektools.UUCP>
Reply-To: don@umd5.umd.edu (Chris Sylvain)
Distribution: net
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 31
Keywords: system(), identifier

In article <1903@tektools.UUCP> jerryp@tektools.TEK.COM (Jerry Peek) writes:
>In article <1369@umd5> don@umd5 (Chris Sylvain) writes:
>> ...
>> error message in response to a call to system()
>> -- "00: is not an identifier".
>
>I haven't checked into *why* your message is happening, but I can reproduce
>it.  If your environment is trashed (has an environment variable with a bad
>name), you can get the message.  Here's an example from 4.3BSD... the Bourne
>shell never starts:
>
>	Script started on Sat Nov 22 05:49:49 1986
>	$ /bin/csh -f
>	% setenv "FOO bar" trash
>	% sh
>	FOO bar=trash: is not an identifier
>	%

I never touched **envp, honest!
Also, "FOO bar=trash" is not the same as "00" <- read "zero,zero".
I peeked at the sh sources and can see where the "notid" error message
is generated, but I don't know why or how. For me, all it takes is a
plain-vanilla system call like system("printenv") to generate the error
message. Really mysterious.

-- 
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