RE: >/dev/stderr broken in /bin/sh?, makewhatis unhappy, & apropos confused, or just me?

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

Linda,

Replies inline below.  Incidentally, why did your message arrive twice
from two different "From:" addresses?  And which should the replies go to?

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, LA Walsh wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Igor Pechtchanski [mailto:pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu]
> > Sent: Sun, Mar 09, 2003 8:59p
> > To: linda w (cyg)
> > Cc: cygwin at cygwin dot com
> > Subject: Re: >/dev/stderr broken in /bin/sh?, makewhatis
> > unhappy, & apropos confused, or just me?
> >
> > Linda,
> >
> > A couple of points to note:
> > 1) In Cygwin, /bin/sh != bash.  /bin/sh == ash, and it doesn't support
> >    bash'isms like /dev/stderr.  Use >&2 and >&1 in /bin/sh.
> -----
>         "Bash"ism?
>
> >From Oreillynet:
>
>     Some UNIX systems, and utilities such as gawk, support
      ^^^^
>     special filenames like /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout, and
>     /dev/stderr. You can use these just as you'd use other
>     files.
>
> I just happened to look and it is on my SuSE system as well -- I didn't
> know bash had special handling for it till just now...learn something
> new every day!
>
> Oh, you'll like this one: "Learn Linux in 15 minutes a week!":
> http://www.2000trainers.com/article.aspx?articleID=144&page=2
>
> Says /dev/std{in|err|out} are standard on linux systems.

On Linux, /bin/sh == bash.

> Maybe Cygwin should be renamed "CyNUX": "Cygwin is Not
> Unix or Linux"? :-)

Pronounced "cynics"? ;-)

> I guess the author of 'makewhatis' didn't know this either.  Perhaps
> it's on enough systems.
>
> > 2) While it's acceptable to have a space in your home directory name or
> > the value of $TMP/$TEMP, some scripts cannot handle it (because they're
> > missing proper quoting).  My guess is that 'makewhatis' is one such...
> ----
>         "Acceptable"?  Gee...thanks.  Considering Windows comes that
> way  ...

Not necessarily.  On my system, I don't have a space in either my home
directory or in $TMP.  Remember, your %HOMEPATH% on Windows != your $HOME
in Cygwin unless you make it so.

If you're interested in fixing the quoting in makewhatis (and other
scripts), I have a few coding tricks that allow for proper quoting that I
could share.

> > Don't know about the apropos bit...
> >       Igor
> ---
>         So I take it that it doesn't give bogus output on your system...
> it's probably some file munged on my system somewhere...I'm alwayws
> messing something up ... always using things in ways they were
> never "intended" to be used...

It could be that I don't have certain manpages installed, as my apropos
returns simply "options: nothing appropriate"...
	Igor

>         Thanks for the heads up on bash....a simple fix for
> makewhatis for it's use of /dev/stdX might be to make the first line
> #!/bin/bash instead of #!/bin/sh.
>
> Linda
>
> >
> > On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, linda w (cyg) wrote:
> >
> > > I normally use bash and this works in bash:
> > >
> > > echo "hello stderr" >/dev/stderr
> > > echo "hello stdout" >/dev/stdout
> > >
> > > But in /bin/sh:
> > >
> > > $ echo hello stderr >/dev/stderr
> > > cannot create /dev/stderr: directory nonexistent
> > > $ echo hello stdout >/dev/stdout
> > > cannot create /dev/stdout: directory nonexistent
> > > $
> > >
> > > ---
> > >         I'm guessing this isn't supposed to work this way?
> > >
> > >         "makewhatis -v" doesn't like seem to like it:
> > > law> makewhatis -v
> > > /usr/sbin/makewhatis: cannot create /dev/stderr: directory
> > nonexistent
> > >
> > >         I invoked the -v when a simple "makewhatis" yielded
> > > "cd: can't cd to /cygdrive/c/Documents"
> > >
> > >         Apropos is a little confused about one of it's lines.
> > > Does anyone else get garbage on this:
> > >
> > > apropos options|wc -l|grep "^SYN"
> > >
> > > "wc" gives this:
> > > law> apropos options|grep "^SYN"|wc
> > >       1    2332   13924
> > >
> > > That's one heck of a long line.  Do I just have some junk somewhere?
> > >
> > > I could attach it, but I don't want to unnecessarily send all that
> > > junk out if it's easily reproducible.
> > >
> > > linda
> >
> > --
> >                               http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
> >       |\      _,,,---,,_              pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu
> > ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_          igor at watson dot ibm dot com
> >      |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'         Igor Pechtchanski
> >     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL   a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!
> >
> > Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really
> > *big* RAMdisk!
> >   -- /usr/games/fortune
> >
> >
>
>
>
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-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor at watson dot ibm dot com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big* RAMdisk!
  -- /usr/games/fortune


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