Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!kilowatt!raz
From: raz%kilowatt@Sun.COM (Steve -Raz- Berry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: No K directive?
Keywords: obscure bug?
Message-ID: <96567@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 30 Mar 89 00:57:59 GMT
References: <9888@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <wYAGwTy00Vsf01Max0@andrew.cmu.edu>
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Reply-To: raz@sun.UUCP (Steve -Raz- Berry)
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In article <wYAGwTy00Vsf01Max0@andrew.cmu.edu> mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes:
)nschultz@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Ned W. Schultz) writes:
)) Could someone please explain the message, "No K directive."?  A friend
)) is getting this when using the hd startup sequence from the 1.3 disks.
)) He tries to "execute dh0:s/hd-startup" and execute fails, breaking
)) [more stuff relating to system specifics that aren't necessary]

)Funny, I had this problem too -- only it happened with my
)startup-sequence.  When writing scripts for the EXECUTE command, the K
)or "KEY" directive is used to determine what the argument template for
)the Execute script is to look like. [example deleted]

This is correct.

)I boot off a floppy, whose startup-sequence transfers control to the
)hard disk as soon as possible.  It EXECUTEs a startup-sequence on the
)hard disk.  For some reason I have never been able to determine, the
)startup-sequence on my hard disk would fail to run with the "No K
)directive" error.  I eventually fixed the problem by putting

).k foobar/k

)as the first line in my startup-sequence, though someday I would like
)to know why I had to do that.  It certainly didn't seem necessary.

It wasn't exactly. Although it will work sometimes.

I have had similar problems when I decided to make my startup-sequence
do some fancy footwork (a script calls a script calls a script, with the
ending of each terminating the previous). Anyway, with the help of Bill
Hawes we (he) traced it to the occurance of a line that did file redirection.
An example:

	'run <nil: >nil: dmouse foo bar c`

What happens is that Execute parses the script BEFORE it is run and looks for 
the '<' and '>' characters to bracket passed variables to the script, and
then do variable substitution based on the '.key' command.
Instead what it finds is the perfectly reasonable redirection, and decides
that it can't match a variable, since there was no '.k' directive to tell it
to expect one. One way around this mess is to change the bracket characters
to something reasonable (ie, not used often). I like:

	.bra {
	.ket }

Adding these two lines to the start of a script should help.

)Michael Portuesi / Information Technology Center / Carnegie Mellon University
)INET:   mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu / BITNET: mp1u+@andrew
)UUCP:   ...harvard!andrew.cmu.edu!mp1u+


Steve -Raz- Berry
UUCP: sun!kilowatt!raz 
"Fate, it protects little children, old women, and ships named Enterprize"