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From: jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: (a)synchrounous shell commands
Message-ID: <3176@mhres.mh.nl>
Date: 21 May 89 09:29:00 GMT
Organization: Multihouse NV, the Netherlands
Lines: 27

A little while ago, tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) posted a
modified version of shell-command (called scommand), which allowed
commands to be run in parralell with the editor, while watching the
output grow.

I found the following extension trivial and handy: using the '&' to
denote background processing reminds me of a popular operating system.

;;
;; (A)synch shell command execution
(defun my-scommand (command &optional flag)
  "Runs shell command asynchrounous, or synchrounous if terminated
with \"&\""
  (interactive "sShell command: \nP")
  (if (string-match "&$" command)
      (scommand (substring command 0 -1) flag)
    (shell-command command flag)
))
(autoload 'scommand "scommand" "Enhanced shell-command" t)
(global-set-key "!" 'my-scommand)

Have fun.
-- 
Johan Vromans			 jv@mh.nl via european backbone (mcvax)
Multihouse Automatisering bv		uucp: ..!{mcvax,hp4nl}!mh.nl!jv
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