Funny kill -9 behaviour

[Guy Harris]

>What I want to know is why in the hay does this happen?

Because the C shell is flakier than a snowstorm.  To quote the BUGS
section of the SunOS 4.0.3 manual page (this quote is also in the S5R4
"csh" manual page):

     Although robust enough for general use, adventures into  the
     esoteric  periphery  of  the  C  shell may reveal unexpected
     quirks.

which translates as "the C shell is flakier than a snowstorm."

Try doing "/usr/bin/kill `cat /tmp/foo`" instead.  "kill" is a C shell
builtin; somehow, for *some* but not *all* builtins, that construct
seems to confuse the shell.  Using the non-built-in "kill" seemed to
make the problem go away, at least when I tried it.