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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!mcvax!ukc!its63b!simon
From: simon@its63b.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Korn Shell
Message-ID: <344@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 23-Mar-87 04:46:49 EST
Article-I.D.: its63b.344
Posted: Mon Mar 23 04:46:49 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Mar-87 04:20:14 EST
References: <580@csun.UUCP> <5680@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2201@ptsfa.UUCP> <730@hoqax.UUCP> <772@bobkat.UUCP>
Reply-To: simon@its63b.ed.ac.uk (ECSC68 S Brown CS)
Organization: I.T. School, Univ. of Edinburgh, U.K.
Lines: 30
Keywords: ksh aliases parameters execve export

In article <772@bobkat.UUCP> m5d@bobkat.UUCP (Mike McNally (Man Insane)) writes:
>In article <730@hoqax.UUCP> twb@hoqax.UUCP (BEATTIE) writes:
>> ...
>>Why can't aliases and functions be exported like shell variables?
>>Tom.
>
>Because the overhead on an execve (or whatever under SV) would be
>frightening.  
Actually, I have not found this to be the case (under both SysV and BSD).
Mind you, I only export a "few" functions (well, a few dozen, anyway...).
Any difference in speed seems to be completely undetectable. 

>Most of the time, the target of the execve is not the
>shell.  I suppose the shell could figure out when it should pass
>functions across the environment (does SV have something like the
>`#!interpreter' thing that BSD has?).
This is irrelevent. I want my functions to be exported to *everything* - not
just immediate shells. After all, even if what I'm execle'ing now isn't a
shell, it could very well spawn off a subshell itself at some future date
(eg, doing a ":sh" in vi, or a "!" escape in lots of things).
(BTW, SysV execve doesn't recognize #!, but the shell itself can when it
tries to execute a commandfile).

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