Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!apple!bionet!ig!agate!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!csli!gandalf
From: gandalf@csli.STANFORD.EDU (Juergen Wagner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Summary of Responses
Message-ID: <5390@csli.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 6 Sep 88 00:33:30 GMT
References: <663@neptune.AMD.COM> <48200005@hcx3> <6246@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>
Reply-To: gandalf@csli.UUCP (Juergen Wagner)
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
Lines: 53

>In article <48200005@hcx3> shirono@hcx3.SSD.HARRIS.COM writes:
>>In comp.unix.questions <1000 Aug 31, 1988>, leightsu@neptune.UUCP writes:
>>> It is not documented in the Ultrix and BSD4.3 doc sets that I have in 
>>> my possession. Am I missing something?
>>
>>Yes.  -c is not an option to su.  It is an option to sh, csh, ksh (and
>>I believe tcsh, as well).

In article <6246@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum) writes:
>...
>the -c may not be an option to su, but it works quite nicely, thank you.
>
[script deleted]
>
>what most likely is happening is that -c is being passed to the shell
>as the command and the command is being passed as the argument, which
>the shell then interprets as a command.  so, in the end everything works
>just fine.

Well, the manual for SunOS 4.0 (3.5 is the same) says:

    ...
    su [ - ] [ -f ] [ -c command ] [ username ]
    ...
    -c command
       Execute command after logging in as the new user.
    ...

Ultrix (T2.2-4A System #5) just has:

    su [ userid ]

Ok, next I tried HP-UX (HP-UX 6.0 and 5.x):

    su [ - ] [ name [ arg ... ] ]

and further down in the man page, it says:

    Any additional arguments  given  on  the  command  line  are
    passed  to  the program invoked as the shell, permitting the
    super-user  to  run   shell   procedures   with   restricted
    privileges.   When  using programs like sh(1), an arg of the
    form -c string executes string via the shell and an  arg  of
    -r will give the user a restricted shell.

4.2 BSD UNIX seems to have the -c option, too.

So far with the poll. I guess, one shouldn't rely on having it when
working under non-BSD systems (HP-UX, Ultrix).

-- 
Juergen "Gandalf" Wagner,		   gandalf@csli.stanford.edu
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford CA