Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!orca!tekecs!frip!andrew
From: andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Finding where an executable was run from -- a proposal.
Message-ID: <10003@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Date: 18 May 88 18:01:14 GMT
References: <67@uvaarpa.virginia.edu> <6800012@cpe> <4527@hoptoad.uucp> <4687@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> <53285@sun.uucp> <2920@emory.uucp>
Sender: andrew@tekecs.TEK.COM
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon
Lines: 18

[]

	"The convention used by ksh-i is to put the full pathname used
	to exec a file in the environment variable "_"."

This is similar to the proposal of a few months ago that the shell
stuff the unparsed command line into an environment variable, and
suffers from the same problem, exemplified thus:

	ksh invokes /bin/fubar, sets "_" to "/bin/fubar"
	/bin/fubar does an exec() of /etc/fubar, leaves "_" alone.
	Now /etc/fubar sees "_" = "/bin/fubar"

A solution to this problem must be universal across all flavors of
exec(), not just system().

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (andrew%tekecs.tek.com@relay.cs.net)   [ARPA]