[2099] in SIPB bug reports
Re: tcsh6 on the vax doesn't define hosttype
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
Mon Sep 16 11:35:24 1991
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 91 11:34:28 -0400
From: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
To: Marc Horowitz <marc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Jeff Tang <jefft@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>, bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Marc Horowitz's message of Mon, 16 Sep 91 02:32:10 EDT,
Reply-To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 91 02:32:10 EDT
From: Marc Horowitz <marc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
>> ~% /mit/sipb/vaxbin/tcsh
>> hosttype: Undefined variable.
>> > echo $hosttype
>> hosttype: Undefined variable.
tcsh6 defines $HOSTTYPE. You'll have to convince me this is a bug
before I change it. As jik pointed out in a message to bugs, This is
more of an athena dotfile bug than anything else.
Well, no, it's not an athena dotfile bug. $hosttype is automatically set
by tcsh; I put it in there with the idea that since tcsh had to know
what architecture its binary was, why not save a fork/exec of
/bin/athena/machtype?
My dotfiles aren't athena-based (thank God!), and they depend on
$hosttype. Of course, my dotfiles also automatically set $hosttype if
its not set by the shell, so I won't lose, but other people may have
custom dot files that will lose because of this. Shell variables are
relatively cheap, anyway, so I would suggest adding $hosttype for
backwards compatibility.
The same reasoning applies for $host, although that's not as important
since I believe fewer dot files probably take advantage of it.
Nevertheless, if we're going to make the claim that we're going to
exactly replace /bin/csh, only better, then we should make sure that
we're providing complete backwards compatibility.
- Ted
