Subject: Re: /usr/bin/which is a csh script!!?!
To: NetBSD-current Discussion List <current-users@netbsd.org>
From: George Michaelson <ggm@apnic.net>
List: current-users
Date: 05/01/2003 09:06:41
Greg hits the nail on the head. When I was brought into the dark side, It was as
a lowly tape-swapper on a mix of pdp-11, Vax-780 and Dec-10 nodes and had to
interact with /bin/sh, /bin/csh, VMS and galaxy/tops-10. In making the 4.1BSD
host my natural home I became infected with /bin/csh as a CLI.
But pragmatism 21 years later means I have accepted the norms of the staff I now
manage, and run bash, as they do. (an abberation into tcsh for a few years is
best forgotten) Alas, my memory fades, and 'which' has more pervasive wiring in
the drum than whence or command -v
Like greg, I've hacked around it.
I apologize for waking up a long, long dead thread. One cluebat hit was enough
for me.
cheers
-George
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 12:37:12 -0400 (EDT) "Greg A. Woods" <woods@weird.com>
wrote:
> [ On Wednesday, April 30, 2003 at 09:27:14 (-0400), Andrew Brown wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: /usr/bin/which is a csh script!!?!
> >
> > imho, the real bug is shells that provide aliases but don't provide
> > something like which(1) as a builtin, which is the only really wrong
> > case (shells that provide aliases and will only tell you that
> > something is an alias aside). which shells are the broken ones?
>
> The only shell so broken in any official NetBSD release is "csh" itself,
> which is why there's a which(1) script just for it.
>
> The real problem that you (and perhaps others) seem to have missed
> completely is that there are lots of users who have either grown up
> accustomed to typing "which" to find out what kind of thing some command
> is, or have been taught to do so by some unthinking mentor who grew up
> doing so. As a result those who use a "Real Shell(tm)" with a "command"
> or "whence" built-in that "Does The Right Thing(tm)", will still end up
> trying to use "which" instead, and thus why even on my systems where
> I've obliterated and eliminated all traces of "csh", I still have a
> "which" command, now implemented as a /bin/sh script. :-)
>
> --
> Greg A. Woods
>
> +1 416 218-0098; <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;
> <woods@robohack.ca> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the
> Weird <woods@weird.com>
--
George Michaelson | APNIC
Email: ggm@apnic.net | PO Box 2131 Milton QLD 4064
Phone: +61 7 3367 0490 | Australia
Fax: +61 7 3367 0482 | http://www.apnic.net