-s flag

[hugh@mimosa.com ("D. Hugh Redelmeier")]

| From: John (_You_ hide, they seek.) Mackin <john@vetsci.su.oz.au>
|
|  Hey, can anyone on the list tell us
| all if they have any reason at all for wanting -s?  Inquiring minds
| want to know.
|
| ... I will always be willing to entertain rc features
| that keep it compatible (in appropriate ways) with traditional shells.

| From: Bob Gibson <rjg@sco.com>
|
| My editor, jove, starts up subshells with the -s option, and obviously
| fails to do so if the shell doesn't support it.  In this case, the
| correct thing to do would be to fix jove to make this configurable.

I am the person who made JOVE invoke subshells with the -s flag.  I
did it in about 1984, so I have forgotten some of the subtle
details.  I will try to reconstruct them.

First, a hint from SunOS 4.0.3 sh(1):

     -s             If the -s option is present or  if  no  argu-
                    ments remain commands are read from the stan-
                    dard input.  Any remaining arguments  specify
                    the   positional  parameters.   Shell  output
                    (except for Special Commands) is  written  to
                    file descriptor 2.

Actually, the story goes back to about about 1976, when I was
hacking on ed(1).  I changed the ! command so that the shell command
was invoked in such a way that the current file could be referred to
as $1.  This was extremely convenient.
	!cp -p $1 $1.BAK
	!chmod u+w $1
	!pr $1 | lpr
	!diff $1.BAK $1

When I started hacking on JOVE, I naturally wanted this feature
too.  The only way that I could get it to work with csh and and all
versions of sh was to throw in the -s.  [I don't remember which
failed without the -s]

I want to keep using this feature.  I don't want to hack JOVE to
allow the suppression of the -s for rc.  I think it is better to
hack rc to accept -s like other UNIX shells.

Hugh Redelmeier
hugh@mimosa.com or {utcsri, uunet!attcan, utzoo, scocan}!redvax!hugh
When all else fails: hugh@csri.toronto.edu
+1 416 482-8253