ksh weird files

[Elizabeth A. Evans]

In article <5658 at chinet.UUCP> csc at chinet.UUCP (Craig Curtin) writes:
>
>We seem to have some strange behavior when using ksh and running some
>shell scripts that exec other shell scripts and then exec back to the
>main shell script.  Our application is a test system that may be running
>all day in the main menu.  The test person simply selects from a main menu
>a sequence of tests to run and they are then execed.  When the tester is
>ready to return to the main menu it is exec`ed back to main.  The problem
>is that when the sub-shell program is exec'ed the ksh places a copy of the
>screen (generated b inline redirection) in a /tmp/pid.sh.level file.  these
>files are not that bit its just that when giving the tester a standard shell
>/bin/sh these are not there.  When the tester logout all /tmp/pid.sh.level
>files are removed but not till then. anyone got any clues??
>thanks,
>Craig Curtin
>ihnp4!chinet!csc

We have a Bourne shell script that provides a menu interface for our
users.  Currently, the users' shell (in passwd) actually *is* the menu
script and it creates /tmp/sh.pid files for each menu screen possibly
generated by the script.  The files are then removed when the user logs
off (which terminates the script).  I've often wondered what was going
on with those files.  The menu screens are all generated with something
like:

echo << END-OF-TEXT

text here

END-OF-TEXT

it appears to be the case that the files are also created tmp when the
menu is executed by someone whose login shell is the C shell.

If anybody knows why these are created, I'd like to hear.