UNIX topics (was Re: MiNT bug)

[Michael Hill <Michael_Hill@csgsystems.com>]

On Sat, Mar 28, 1998 at 02:51:03PM -0500, Martin-Eric Racine wrote:
>After more MAN reading, it seems BASH is better suited to 
>processing scripts than acting as a login shell, given the
>few commandline options.

Actually, the reason I like it is for its interactive features; I would
never use anything other than the standard Bourne shell for shell scripts.

>TCSH has a simple '%B bold text here %b' method of outlining 
>bold text in the commandline, which is listed among available
>variables for 'prompt' but there's no equivalent under BASH.

The way I do that in bash is:

PS1="\n[\u@\[\033[1m\]\h:\w\[\033[0m\]] \t \$ "

It embeds the xterm command codes into the prompt string.  It's
admittedly not as convenient (nor as flexible, if the %B/%b codes
reference termcap), but....

>This is one of many things I've been trying to accomplish on
>BASH, which is supposedly better and more flexible than TCSH,
>but currently without any success.

I don't know if it's necessarily supposed to be "more flexible", but
it is at least more internally consistent than the C shell or any
syntactic derivative.

>Note I'm not gonna BASH this shell because of oversights on
>the commandline front, but then again spending a whole day
>parsing through books and MAN pages only to realize BASH is
>not well-suited for this kind of purpose is frustrating, to
>say the least. 

I mentioned documentation that comes with the source code for bash;
it is definitely a lot more useful than trying to use the man page to
figure out the features.  I have it available if you're interested.

> >Martin-Eric, I have to question the authority of the UNIX books
> >you're consulting.  :^)  They seem to have caused you a lot of
> >confusion on UNIX concepts.
>
>Yes, I'm begining to think the same. 8^)
>
>... although people hint maybe the author is simply assuming 
>that features found in distributions he has encountered and
>adopted for himself are "standard" Unix environement.

... which is still poor authorship, if you ask me.  ;^)

-- 
			--Michael

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hill   <><  Isaiah 9:6 | "Am I ever gonna change?
Michael_Hill@csgsystems.com    |  Take it day by day
Aerospace/Software Engineer    |  My will is weak and my flesh too strong
CSG Systems, Inc.              |  This peace I seek till thy kingdom comes"
http://www.qadas.com/~msh      |           -- Extreme, "Am I Ever Gonna Change"
---In a marketplace (like the one of ideas), not everything has equal value!---
Did you ever notice that everybody in favor of abortion has already been born?!