Re: more problems w/ irix

[Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>]

Zefram wrote:
> It's a nice syntax.  If it's grossly inefficient, we should improve the
> code; being built in to the shell it *ought* to be more efficient than
> execing cat, at least for small files.

It's not hard to allow an indefinite number of files for input
(i.e. cat) if you record their names instead of opening them
immediately.  The downside is some rather unexpected behaviour: the
files are opened at random stages, not when the redirection line is
handled, and an error message is only produced when the file is opened
so that the command will already have been executed and all files up
to the bad one will already have been output.  (Of course, it would be
set up so that the first file in the list is opened straight away.)
Maybe this is too partial a solution to consider seriously, although
it does correspond to the behaviour of cat.  I've got it working but
for these reasons I deliberately haven't included it.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>       Tel: +49 33762 77366
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/       Fax: +49 33762 77413
Deutches Electronen-Synchrotron --- Institut fuer Hochenergiephysik Zeuthen
DESY-IfH, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany.