From: haahr@mv.us.adobe.com (Paul Haahr)
To: rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Subject: Re: redirection and built-ins
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 11:24:17 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <9306071524.AA16980@astro.mv.us.adobe.com> (raw)
Alan writes:
> | ``echo ... | read foo'' is not the appropriate construct in rc or es.
> Yeah, because it doesn't work; there is nothing intrinsicly
> `inappropriate' about it.
i disagree. it's inappropriate because rc already has a perfectly good
mechanism for setting variables to the output of commands: backquotes.
why is that not enough? what functionality does that lack?
i don't think that the goal in rc was to provide a million different
syntaxes for the same operation.
> and I was actually thinking of a functionally-implemented read.
what does this mean? (``functionally-implemented''? that it works?
that it doesn't have side effects?)
> When
> I mentioned rc forking to provide redirection for built-ins, I was
> also thinking about functions, but it was sloppy writing on my part.
as far as i can tell, there are two issues here:
(1) rc forks for all redirection operations, even ones which
are applied to builtins and shell functions.
(2) rc and es fork a child process for each component of a
pipeline, even if some of the components are builtins
or functions.
(1) is handled differently in es, and seems to work ok. in my
mind, it's a performance hack, and not a very good one, because
from the bit of profiling that i've done it doesn't make that much
of a difference. the mechanism we came up with for doing this in
es could be applied to rc just fine, but it seems like a lot of
work for very little payoff.
(2), i think, is the right thing, because it's the only symmetric
answer. in the pipeline
a | b | c
if all a, b, and c are shell functions, which one should run in
the context of the shell? what should happen if the command is
exit 1 | exit 2 | exit 3
? i prefer the current rc/es answer which is: the shell does
not exit, and the return status is (1 2 3). i believe that in
Tom Duff's verion, the top-level shell exits with either 1 or 3,
and Alan seems to argue that 3 is the right answer.
paul
next reply other threads:[~1993-06-07 15:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1993-06-07 15:24 Paul Haahr [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1993-06-07 17:10 Alan Watson
1993-06-07 5:23 Alan Watson
1993-06-07 0:32 Paul Haahr
1993-06-05 18:59 Alan Watson
1993-06-05 18:45 Paul Haahr
1993-06-05 18:38 Alan Watson
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