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From: jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Using argv to show process status
Message-ID: <1224@mhres.mh.nl>
Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 03:16:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhres.1224
Posted: Fri Aug 21 03:16:53 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 18:39:38 EDT
References: <1217@mhres.mh.nl> <6303@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
Organization: Multihouse N.V., The Netherlands
Lines: 28
Keywords: argv ps

In article <6303@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>Great if you really want to clobber other arguments and/or
>environment variables.  [ ...]
>
>Why bother?  Are you trying to run games on a system where
>you're not supposed to, or what?

What I have is the following situation (definitely not a game):

We are running a kind of interpreter for a programming language in which
lots of applications have been written. One of the features of the
language is that a program can chain to a successor program. Chains are
handled internally by the interpreter, no new process is started.

When a user starts an application with "RUN menu", and menu chains to different
application programs which all chain back to menu for the next choice,
the "ps" will always show the "RUN menu" command.

What I want to achieve is a method - more or less defined on some systems
- to show what the user is really doing. The interpreter runs on lots of
systems (System V, BSD, MS-DOS), and I am aware that there is no generic
solution for this problem. That's why I am looking for alternatives.

Changing argv is tricky, but it seems to work on some systems ...
-- 
Johan Vromans                           | jv@mh.nl via European backbone
Multihouse N.V., Gouda, the Netherlands | uucp: ..{seismo!}mcvax!mh.nl!jv
"It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"