ksh88 vs Ultrix 4.0

[lwv27 at CAS.BITNET]

We have encountered such a peculiar problem with ksh88 that I was
wondering how others are dealing with the problem.

We were running an older version of ksh when Ultrix 4.0 came in.  A
new version (ksh88e)  had arrived and so someone decided to bring it
up as the default ksh.  We had tested the new version under SunOS and things
looked fine...

What we discovered was that for some reason users were not able to access
their history files and there were problems with some typing (lagging
response time, etc.)  One workaround was to set viraw mode, which
fixed some of the problems.  But now we had a problem with type ahead.
And what a problem - we found if users type before the prompt returns,
the output is buffered some place - to appear a command or two later!
This sounds almost harmless - until you see the following:
a user types a cc command.
While waiting, they type a cd D.someplace without thinking.
The cc command generates an error.
Since the cd command doesnt execute, they go ahead and type
vi file.c
AFTER ENTERING VI, the letters "cd D.someplace" are typed as if the
user typed them.

The cd generates a bell.  The D deletes the current line!

Of course, everyone wanted to blame ksh88e.

Interestingly enough, when the older version of ksh was compiled under
Ultrix 4.0, it had the same behavior.

Even more interesting was the fact that when we took the ksh 88e source,
exactly as compiled on the Ultrix 4.0 system, and compiled it under Ultrix
2.2, everything worked fine.


Anyone have any ideas on work arounds?
--
Larry W. Virden                 UUCP: osu-cis!chemabs!lwv27
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