Re: Beta release rc-1.6b3 available

[Buggs <buggs-rc@splashground.de>]

On Wednesday 17 October 2001 15:34, Tim Goodwin wrote:
> > Suse Linux 7.2 with a CVS gcc-3.1 from last week does fine.
>
> Thanks for the report.  (Keep 'em coming, folks!)

Your welcome. I migth be able to provide a few others next week.

> > But there are some issues, not version dependant, that I don't
> > understand. This will get out of control:
> >
> > ; fn l {ls -l $*}
> > ; fn l {l -a $*}
> > ; l
>
> Your function `l' always calls itself recursively, so it rapidly runs
> out of stack.

Thougth so.

> Remember that, unlike other shells, rc is not a macro processor.  In
> particular, the `l' in the function body of your second definition is
> *not* expanded using the previous definition of `fn l'.  (You can
> always use `whatis' to see the current definition of a function.)

So my old definition is lost and it constantly calls itself.

> A simple
>
>     fn l { ls -la $* }
>
> is probably what you want.

Yes, probably. But I also wondered about the why of the failure and
why I did not receive a warning (could have been a bug after all).

[...]
> > And what about job control, how do I handle that?
>
> This shell does not have job control.
>
> It has been said (by Duff? Pike? Rakitzis? I forget...) that job
> control adds a deal of complexity to handle just the easy part of a
> hard problem.  The suggested alternative in a windowing environment is
> to open a new window.

I see. That was exactly what I wanted to know, thanks.

> If you're not in a windowing environment, you might like the `screen'
> program, which does both the easy and hard parts of the problem.
> There's also a "tabbed" version of gnome-terminal around, called
> `multignometerm'.

Never used multignometerm but that is the way KDE's konsole takes,
which I can also recommend.


Thanks again,
Buggs