Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!peregrine!ccicpg!nick
From: nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Make & .cshrc
Summary: Not a misfeature
Message-ID: <24946@ccicpg.UUCP>
Date: 16 Sep 88 18:08:35 GMT
References: <452@alice.marlow.uucp> <67870@sun.uucp> <67925@sun.uucp> <430@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> <68616@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley)
Organization: CCI CPG, Irvine CA
Lines: 26

In article <68616@sun.uucp> guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>Yes, it was introduced in either the System III or the System V "make".  I'd
>call it a "misfeature", not a "feature", since it breaks existing Makefiles
>when run by users whose login shell isn't "/bin/sh".
>

I personally like this feature/misfeature, as it allows me to invoke ksh.
Certainly for makefiles which I intend to be portable, I only use sh
commands, but for my own development I use commands/scripts which need
ksh.  Our site does not install ksh as sh, and I cannot reliably use the
#! mechanism as ksh lives in different places on different machines.
(Yes, I know that is silly, but that is how it currently is.)
Anyway, #! would only allow ksh scripts, not ksh commands directly
from the make file.  This is also why I would say that any version of
make which attempts to be 'efficient' and exec directly a rule line which
does not include shell meta-characters is broken; such versions of make
do not take account of new shells such as ksh, and even then would have to
be kept in step with the evolution of sh.



-- 

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Nick Crossley, CCI, 9801 Muirlands, Irvine, CA 92718-2521, USA
Tel. (714) 458-7282,  uucp: ...!uunet!ccicpg!nick