Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!mmdf
From: V61%DHDURZ1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Ronald Lamprecht)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: ST (PC?): SH bug  (was: Re: 'profile problems')
Message-ID: <9195@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 20 Feb 89 10:47:29 GMT
Sender: usenet@udel.EDU
Lines: 56

In his article from  7 Feb 89  Gerry Wheeler suspected:
> I can tell, the .profile is not being read or is not being processed.

At least for the ST version  the /etc/profile and the $HOME/.profile are
executed in wrong sequence:

 $HOME/.profile  is executed first and afterwards   /etc/profile

as you can easily check by inserting unique echo commands into both scripts.

Of course one can easily exchange the both calls in 'sh1.c':

Line 147:        if ((f = open("/etc/profile", 0)) >= 0)
     148:            next(remap(f));
     149:        if ((f = open(".profile", 0)) >= 0)

what indeed causes the shell to execute the profiles in right order.

But the current order in sh1.c should be the right one --- the bug must be
located in a more general subroutine, because it causes trouble in other
situations, too:

Create a few shell scripts named 'bat1',...  each consisting of a single
unique statement:

        echo "bat1"      ,...

Now feed the shell with the following lines:

1) $ . bat1 ; . bat2 ; . bat3

   Result:  bat3
            bat2
            bat1

2) $ . bat1 ; echo "hello" ; . bat2

   Result:  hello
            bat2
            bat1

3) $ . bat1 &

   Result:   job ID    (nothing else!)


Knowing the results of these tests it's no wonder that the profiles are
executed in the wrong order. Furthermore test 2 shows that our problem is
not only a question of the execution order of script files. Therefore it
may be not easy to fix this BUG -- I won't do it (the sources are not
well commented), but perhaps the author (AST ?) may do it.


Bitnet:  V61@DHDURZ1                               Ronald Lamprecht
UUCP:    ...!unido!DHDURZ1.bitnet!V61              Theoretische Physik
ARPAnet: V61%DHDURZ1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU       (Heidelberg, West Germany)