Re: Replace login shell with a different programm

From: Peter T. Breuer (ptb_at_lab.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 01/13/05 

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:01:51 +0100

Alexander Skwar <from@alexander.skwar.name> wrote:
> > Works fine here!
>
> Who cares?

Me, you, the rest of the world.

> > I don't know what csh you have.
>
> Exactly. And because of that it's wrong for you to assume
> that I did not read the manual.

I do not assume. I say to read the manual becuase it is in my manual
(I have used csh or tcsh as my shell since about 1982, btw). I do not
have any special version. I don't think it's even the most current in
debian ..

> But not important. I don't disagree that it might be listed
> in your manual. But how exactly does htat help me?

Well, you could go and get the right manual, after discovering that
your manual did not coincide with the natural logic of shell
implementations. Ya got me curious ... debian seems to csh 20020413-1.1
in all distros nowadays, but I have:

Package: csh
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: shells
Installed-Size: 280
Maintainer: Edward Brocklesby <ejb@debian.org>
Version: 5.26-10
Provides: c-shell
Depends: libc6
Conflicts: tcsh (<= 6.06-3)
Description: Shell with C-like syntax, standard login shell on BSD systems.
 The C shell was originally written at UCB to overcome limitations in the
 Bourne shell. Its flexibility and comfort (at that time) quickly made it
 the shell of choice until more advanced shells like ksh, bash, zsh or
 tcsh appeared. Most of the latter incorporate features original to csh.

That's different from my tcsh version, in case you suspected. My csh
seems to be have been installed in 1999:

% ll info/csh.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 231 Aug 6 1999 info/csh.list
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 162 Jul 10 1999 info/csh.postinst*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 398 Jul 10 1999 info/csh.preinst*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 102 Jul 10 1999 info/csh.prerm*

So I really can't claim to be up to date. OTOH the latest debian csh
also contains the same info as my man page does:

.\" $OpenBSD: csh.1,v 1.42 2001/11/13 14:00:15 mpech Exp $
.\" $NetBSD: csh.1,v 1.10 1995/03/21 09:02:35 cgd Exp $
...
.Dd January 21, 1994
.Dt CSH 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm csh
.Nd a shell (command interpreter) with C-like syntax
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm csh
.Op Fl bcefimnstvVxX
.Op Ar argument ...
.Nm csh
.Op Fl l
.Sh DESCRIPTION

So it looks to me as though the -l has been there for at least five
years. I could check the changelog ... contains nthing relevant that I
can see, and it goes back to 1996:

csh (5.26-5) unstable; urgency=low

  * Converted to new packaing standards.

 -- Dominik Kubla <Dominik.Kubla@Uni-Mainz.DE> Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:44:45 +0200

> User Commands csh(1)
>
> NAME
> csh - shell command interpreter with a C-like syntax
>
> SYNOPSIS
> csh [ -bcefinstvVxX ] [ argument ... ]
>
> DESCRIPTION
> [...]
>
> Question: Where's the -l?

Where your bugreport to your package maintainer says to put it!

> I do have *a* csh. A pretty fine working, thanks to Stephane's and
> your hints.
>
> I might not have *your* csh.

Well, I use tcsh nowadays. I used to have to do some natty escape
sequence programming in csh to do what was built-in in tcsh, but I still
don't like using tab instead of escape for completion.

Peter

Relevant Pages