Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!esosun!cogen!alen
From: alen@cogen.UUCP (Alen Shapiro)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Trick question
Message-ID: <380@cogen.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 15:21:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: cogen.380
Posted: Mon Oct 19 15:21:34 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Oct-87 23:49:47 EDT
References: <666@portofix.liu.se>
Reply-To: alen@cogen.UUCP (Alen Shapiro)
Organization: Cogensys, LaJolla, Calf.
Lines: 44
Keywords: path PATH which
Summary: you have another '+' command

In article <666@portofix.liu.se> kjepo@portofix.liu.se (Kjell Post) writes:
>A little trick question for you all: what's happening here?
>
>	% cat > \*
>        date
>        ^D
>   % chmod +x \*
>	% \*
>        Tue Oct 13 03:13:08 MET 1987
>   %
>	% cat > +
>        date
>        ^D
>   % chmod +x +
>   % +
>   $                         -- entered Bourne-shell
>

You have another '+' command, some sites use this command to give
single command su status, but used by itself it gives you a root
shell (if you pass the site dependent '+' id test). Try
	% which +
to see where it is kept also
	% ./+ 
to resolve the conflict

A related effect;
A good way to spend a day debugging a working program is to call the
test version of a program "test", since most sites have a /bin/test
and the user usually has '.' last on his path list (can you say
security), when you invoke the program (% test) /bin/test gets run not
./test and NOTHING will be printed. Using a debugger (dbx etc.) the
program works fine but once back at command level it fails again.

The answer of course is to assume the debugger is not worth a sh**
and put print statements in the program, progressivly nearer to
main() till some response is obtained. Since /bin/test is running,
no response will ever be seen and the programmer will go quietly
insane. (By the way, old versions of the test program ("o_test" etc.)
magically start to work if they are tried!!).


--alen the Lisa slayer (it's a long story)
		...!seismo!esosun!cogen!alen