read the manual and it didn't help, can you?

[luscher at nicmad.UUCP]

> Like flakes of dandruff, no 2 versions of the UNIX manual are alike.  Let us
> not berate someone for not reading what he does not have.

	I was trying to create my first shell script in file 'nic':

echo print graph\?
set ans = $<
if ( $ans == 'y' ) then
	echo do something useful
endif

	When I entered 'nic' to a (csh) prompt I read:

print graph?
nic: syntax error at line 3: `newline' unexpected

	Two days later, after reading some shell scripts crossing the
net (thanks everyone!) I managed to get the proper response by,
(are you ready?) inserting a line at the top of file 'nic', which
contained solely the character '#'.  On our 4.2bsd system the 
command 'man csh' produces a manual which doesn't mention the '#'
character.  From the examples on the net I deduced that '# ' is
a comment and '#! ' is a shell command request.  Have I erred?
What in the #$%& is going on???
	Thanks for your help.



> man pages posted recently by Guy Harris one might remark that, contrary to
> what is stated for creat(2): "Creat will fail and the file will not be created
> or truncated if one of the following occur: ...", creat will in fact create
> (but not truncate) a file when the EMFILE (too many open files) error is
> returned.
> 
> (This is on BSD4.2 and was noticed by ab at unido while playing around with hack.)

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Jim Luscher / Nicolet Instruments / Oscilloscope Div.
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