export -f problem

export -f problem

[Borsenkow Andrej]

Mandrake has startup function that looks like:

mc ()
{
... define some suff ...
}

[[ $SHELL = "/bin/bash" ]] && export -f mc

If your login shell is bash and you call zsh you get:

[root@localhost root]# zsh
mc () {
         mkdir -p $HOME/.mc/tmp 2> /dev/null
         chmod 700 $HOME/.mc/tmp
         MC=$HOME/.mc/tmp/mc-$$
         /usr/bin/mc -P "$@" > "$MC"
         cd "`cat $MC`"
         rm -i -f "$MC"
         unset MC
}

because export -f mc just prints out mc() code.

While the condition above is wrong (it should test for BASH_VERSION) - 
should we either make zsh set SHELL or be more compatible with export -f?

-andrej

Re: export -f problem

[Bart Schaefer]

Egad.  Apparently the rule is, if the first four characters of the value
of an environment variable are `() {', it gets defined as a function upon
import.  Look:

schaefer[504] export foo='(){echo hi there;}'
schaefer[505] bash2
bash2-2.03$ foo
bash2: foo: command not found
bash2-2.03$ 
schaefer[506] export foo='() {echo hi there;}'
schaefer[507] bash2
bash2: foo: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `{echo'
bash2: foo: line 1: `foo () {echo hi there;}'
bash2: error importing function definition for `foo'
bash2-2.03$ 
schaefer[508] export foo='() { echo hi there; }'
schaefer[509] bash2
bash2-2.03$ foo
hi there
bash2-2.03$ 

I think this is rather horrible; but, if we actually implement something
like this, we have to make sure that we do not allow `preexec', `precmd',
`periodic', `TRAPxxx', etc. to be imported.