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To: The rc Mailing List <rc@archone.tamu.edu>
Subject: Re: early reaction(s) to rc 
In-reply-to: john's message of Fri, 23 Aug 91 09:40:03 -0400.
             <9108232340.26762.rc.bafoj@syd.dit.csiro.au> 
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 21:28:14 -0500
From: Chris Siebenmann <cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>
Message-Id: <91Aug26.222817edt.2702@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>

[This is part 1 of N parts of stuff; more to come as I digest and
comment on my pile of email.]

John writes:
| This is what I fail to follow; I don't understand why one needs to tell
| whether or not the shell is interactive in order to accomplish the goal
| of making a root prompt be something arbitrary.

 Figuring out what the root prompt should be may take a significant
number of (potentially expensive) operations; I'd like to do it only
when necessary, to avoid the performance hit.

 In hindsight, setting the root prompt was a bad example of per-shell
startup actions. A much better one for people with windowing systems
is arranging a per-window history, something that is highly useful
(especially for me, as just specifying a global history file seems to
result in all sorts of interesting jumbling up of stuff). For X, one
can almost get there cheaply with a prompt function, but it's not
quite close enough (and going the final step is expensive; you need to
check what your current tty is, which is not something I want to do
for every prompt).

	- cks