sh behavior change: warning

gwyn at BRL-VGR.ARPA gwyn at BRL-VGR.ARPA
Thu Oct 4 07:20:54 AEST 1984


From:      Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn at BRL-VGR.ARPA>

Somewhere between UNIX System V Release 1 and UNIX System V Release 2
the Bourne shell (which generally got much nicer) was changed to adhere
more closely to the description of its EXIT STATUS in the manual.
Namely, if a non-interactive shell detects an error it terminates.
Now a "shell-detected error" has been extended to include a command's
being "not found".

This makes sense all right; however, it IS a change in the way the
shell acts.  We found out about it when a command formerly run from
our /etc/rc was removed but the /etc/rc left unchanged.

Just thought I would warn people so they know about this new feature.
I personally don't consider it a bug but rather a bug fix, but even
bug fixes can break working code.



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