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From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: CCA Emacs bogosity (random environment variable)
Message-ID: <7181@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jun-87 17:40:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: mimsy.7181
Posted: Tue Jun 23 17:40:42 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jun-87 03:54:02 EDT
References: <2750@phri.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 36

In article <2750@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>... For some reason that I cannot fathom, the authors decided to
>invent an environment variable called "henry" and set it equal to "1".

>	ppc[i++] = "henry=1";		/* Thank you, Robert Henry */

>... I don't know who Robert Henry is, but obviously he's somebody the
>author wanted to thank.  Couldn't he have thought of a way to express his
>appreciation without having mucked up my environment?

Well, yes.  Henry's thanks must be put in one of two places.  The
environment is one.  To tell you the other would give it away.

>If you can't resist this cuteness, at least document it and make it a
>feature!

	/* you are not supposed to understand this */

Oh, all right.  Another Unix joke out of the closet....

It seems that, back in the days of 4.1BSD or earlier, and quite
possibly in 4.2BSD as well, though it is gone in 4.3BSD, /usr/ucb/Mail
would not accept tilde escapes if its input were not from a terminal.
When using a pipe to /usr/ucb/Mail there was no way to set, e.g.,
the `Cc' header line.  Robert Henry objected to this behaviour.
Someone, probably Kurt Shoens, `fixed' this by allowing tilde
escapes in piped input as well as that from a terminal, but only
if the `henry' option were set.  Hence, the other place for Henry's
thanks is in your own .mailrc.

4.3BSD Mail always acts as though the henry flag were set.  Sigh.
Next thing you know someone will change the name of the `BUGS'
manual section to `RESTRICTIONS'. . . .  :-)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	seismo!mimsy!chris