On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 02:26:10PM -0500, David Forrai wrote:
> I was playing with a configuration file for sh (as specified in the
> variable ENV) last night.  I wanted to run specific configuration if sh
> is running interactive.  In Solaris, I had used the PS1 (prompt)
> variable.  Solaris does not set this variable for noninteractive shells.
>  Not so for NetBSD.
> 
> The man page for sh gives psuedo-code to test this but the code is
> limited to testing whether the interactive option flag (-i) on the
> command line has been set.  The description said that an interactive
> shell is always connected to a tty device and usually has no command
> line arguments.
> 
> I used the TERM variable to determine whether it was interactive (i.e.
> if TERM is set, sh is interactive).

One of the 'usual' tests is to see whether stdin is a terminal
by running 'tty' eg:

$ rsh machine sh -i
sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
$ tty
not a tty
$

(the above is a 'useful' way to bypass some failures of the
login system!)

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk