Subject: Re: Killing processes by name
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.ORG, mrg@eterna.com.au>
From: Arne H. Juul <arnej@pvv.unit.no>
List: current-users
Date: 04/11/1996 18:55:02
 > oh, and /bin/kill on solaris:
 > 
 > svr4islame ~# cat /bin/kill
 > /bin/sh -c "kill $*"

Yeuch.  Can you spot the 2.5 errors in this one?

1) It's not executable by execve(), only from shells which guess
that all executable files returning exec format error is a script.
2) Since it's going to be run as a script anyway, you don't need
to start *another* shell, so you could skip the extra /bin/sh -c.
2.5) One shouldn't use $* when interpolating paramters.  This
I only count as half an error since kill doesn't work with strange
spacing or whatever anyway, but it should give saner errors if you try
something weird.

#!/bin/sh
kill "$@"

would have been a lot better...

  -  Arne H. J.