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From: mcgill-vision!icule!pinard@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Francois Pinard)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
Subject: SHELL vs ESHELL when no job control
Message-ID: <9002111732.AA00833@icule.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 90 17:32:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
Distribution: gnu
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In GNU Emacs 18.54.2 of Sat Feb 10 1990 on icule (usg-unix-v)

Where there is no job control, suspend-emacs spawns an interactive
shell instead of suspending itself, selecting this shell with the
SHELL environment variable.  This SHELL is also used by shell-command
and shell-command-on-region.  When the ESHELL environment variable is
specified, it overrides SHELL for the command shell, which opens an
interactive shell window.

My suggestion (this is a mere suggestion :-) is to add, let's say,
some ZSHELL environment variable which would, if it exists, override
SHELL for the specific case of a suspend-command where there is no job
control.

As I see things, SHELL should normally designate a fast and small
shell like /bin/sh.  ESHELL and ZSHELL might be more user oriented
shells like csh or bash.  However, since bash and emacs' interactive
shell windows are not intimate brothers yet, I would prefer to have
bash fired by suspend-emacs, but another shell for emacs interactive
shell windows.  This is the rationale behind my suggestion.

-- 
Franc,ois Pinard                                    pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
(514) 588-4656            ``Vivement GNU!''          ...!uunet!iros1!pinard