🚀 go-pugleaf

The first thing on a command line is expected to be a command word to CSH.  
It is the same sort of word as:

      echo hi >`expression`

CSH expects this word not to contain blanks; you can successfully say:

      `echo date`

but not:

      `echo echo hi`

This may be correct, since one wonders what:

      `expression` arg1 arg2 arg3 arg4

should do.  If <expression> expanded to multiple words, the supposed
args would not be the first ones passed to the command, just as:

      echo hi >`expression`

would not do what you expect if <expression> expanded to multiple
words, only the first of which was taken as the file name for redirection.
It's a case of the shell being conservative about peculiar constructions.

If you tell CSH to re-parse the stuff coming in from `...`, imbedded
blanks expand and your example works:

      eval `grep bleen /etc/rc`
-- 
        -IAN!  (Ian! D. Allen)      University of Waterloo

Tribble trouble again: in article <492@masscomp.UUCP> trb@masscomp.UUCP
writes that:
	% `grep netload /etc/rc`
doesn't work correctly when given to the C shell.  Yep, it's a well-known
bug -- or actually a feature, since it's documented.  My favorite example,
which shows why you might actually want to do this, is:
	% `tset various-options some-terminal`
which should set up the TERM and TERMCAP environment variables.  It's so
obvious that you'd want to do that with tset that the bug is explained and
documented under "tset" -- where else?  It also explains that the working
(does that mean correct?) form is:
	% eval `tset various-options some-terminal`
It also says that the bug will be fixed someday.

If you can't detect the note of sarcasm in the above paragraph, take my
word for it -- it's there.
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Torrey Pines       Greg@sdcsvax.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA

While I won't argue that it's a ``good thing'', the C shell was
apparently *designed* to give the ``ambiguous'' message.  Any time
globbing produces more than one word for what might be argv[0],
the C shell gives you the ``ambiguous'' message.  So

	% `look metro`
says
	`look metro`: Ambiguous.

but

	% `look metron`
says
	metronome: Command not found.

It makes a certain amount of sense, though I think I'd prefer the
other way.  (Hmm---yet another C shell magic variable?)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci (301) 454-7690
UUCP:	{seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris@umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris@maryland

#R:masscomp:-49200:smu:21700001:000:351
smu!pedz    Jul 21 18:04:00 1984

RE:Brain Damaged csh command parsing

We came accross this problem only a few days ago.  We were tring
to get the tset -s option to work.  The secret is to stick an
eval infront.  Rather or not this is how things should be done or
how it was intended to be done, I am not going to speculate.

Perry Smith
convex!smu!pedz			(uucp)
pedz@smu				(CS-Net)