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To:	rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Subject: All I want for Christmas ...
Date:	Wed, 2 Dec 1992 22:41:13 -0500
From:	Alan Watson <alan@oldp.astro.wisc.edu>
X-Mts: smtp

Well, rc v1.5 was mentioned, so I figure it's time to get out my wish
list and see what Santa brings for Christmas.

1. Error handling after exec

If I do:

	; exec foo
	foo not found

then rc dies (as do all other shells, I believe).  Would it be
difficult to continue after such an error, so that the user could
decide on the appropriate action to take?  This would more closely
parallel the behaviour of the system call, but is it the behaviour we
want from a shell?

2. -s flag

Other shells have a -s flag, meaning "read commands from stdin unless
told otherwise."  It seems pretty useless to me, but my X server
executes my .X11Startup by the equivalent of "$SHELL -s <.X11Startup".
I'm not sure if this is standard (what's wrong with execlp?), but it
would not surprise me if this feature was specific to Ultrix servers.
Ultrix rather frowns of the MIT way of configuring X.  (Oh, the drama
and joy of Ultrix.)  I get around this by using a five line C program
as my "shell"; it eliminates any "-s" at argv[1] and then execs rc.
Is there any support for adding an (essentially dummy) -s flag to rc
for the sake of compatibility with other shells?