perror(3) considered harmful

[Dave Decot]

Why does csh give the message

    % foo
    foo: Command not found.

when foo is an executable (by me) shell file on my path?

Because the first line of foo says

    #! csh -f

And, of course, "csh" is not a full pathname (why does it have to be!?),
so poor exec*(2) can't find it.

What I want to know is, why in blazes doesn't somebody tell me that 
*csh* is the "Command not found" and not my innocent (at least "found")
shell file?

And why do protected directories refuse to acknoledge that they exist
when I try to cd to them?  I can find out the name and that it is indeed
a directory by doing ls(1), so I keep checking my spelling and doing pwd's
and all sorts of things when the real problem is that the message

    % pwd
    /usr
    % cd src
    src: No such file or directory.

is simply WRONG.  And who said ANYTHING about a file?  If the kernel
can't give more accurate messages, perror shouldn't be used.

Dave Decot		 "Programmers are people, too."
decvax!cwruecmp!decot    (Decot.Case at rand-relay)