ksh availability

[David St.Pierre]

One of the modes ksh uses to define functions is compatible with SV_R2.
A nice additional feature is the ability to define an ENV variable which
points to a file of functions. This effectively allows functions to
continue to be defined across sub-shells. If you use 5620 layers or shl,
you will begin to appreciate this.

I have run across an inconsistency between ksh and sh. I would be grepping
for a particular string in a large file, creating a temporary sub-file.
If I found more than one match, I wanted to provide a selection mechanism
at the terminal. The following (abbreviated) fragment shows what I did:


PROFSIDS=/usr/ladm/lib/profs_ids
TMPB=yyy

	grep -i "$1" $PROFSIDS > $TMPB
	while :
	do
		read USERID SYSTEM NAME
		if [ -z "$USERID" ]
		then
			break
		fi
			echo "NAME = $NAME, USERID = $USERID [y] \c"
			read ANS < /dev/tty
			if [ "$ANS" = "n" ]
			then
				continue
			fi
		echo "The answer was $ANS"
	done < $TMPB

In "sh", I got the results I wanted. In ksh, $TMPB was closed after a single
line was read, presumably because /dev/tty was opened in the inner loop.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or feature. And my copy of ksh may have no
resemblance to the version being offered in the toolchest.