Funny thing happened to me ... Beware of "$_" and the shell

[Thad P Floryan]

Richard Foulk writes, in regards to ksh:

"Looks like another good reason to stick with csh.  !$ is easier to type
and it displays the substitution so you know what's going on."

I disagree.  The use of ``$_'' and other goodies of the shell is intended
(my opinion) for use primarily in shell scripts.

Using ksh interactively (in emacs mode) it's trivial to recall the previous
line(s) and alter one (or several) parameters.

I have been informed (by a person who shall remain anonymous here) that the
csh does work on the UNIXPC.

But everything I've seen and heard clearly points to ksh being the superior
shell; that's even why AT&T makes the sources available for less than the
binary distribution ... to encourage wider use and distribution. (And the
source costs $3,000 in case you're interested).

While we're on the subject of ksh, can anyone definitively correlate the
3.51's distribution ksh with reality?  "Reality" being published documentation
about the Korn Shell.

For example, on an HP-UX system, if I type ^V I get "Version 06/03/86a".

The "KORNSHELL Command and Programming Language" (AT&T and Prentice-Hall)
describes the version dated "11/16/88" although the book also references the
older version "06/03/86".

On the UNIXPC using the stock ksh, the version is "ksh/sh:msg.c  1.2" and the
version from The STORE! returns "Version 06/03/86"!

The file of the UNIXPC stock ksh is dated 1-Jan-1970 and The STORE!'s is dated
5-Jun-1986 (as recorded in the cpio "+IN" archive).

Anyone know HOW the "stock" ksh relates to the 'real' version numbers?  Is the
"stock" ksh a bogus one (even though it works nicely) or what?  Both the stock
ksh and The STORE!'s ksh are exactly the same size: 90088 bytes.

I *WISH* cretins wouldn't muck with files' dates and times.  :-(

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]