HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA (06/13/84)
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA> I have looked at various Unix introductions. I agree with the concensus that Kernighan and Pike appears to be the best of the lot. However it is done for version 7. As we are on a Pyramid, we have a choice between 4.2bsd and System V. We will probably set up most of our students to use the 4.2 side, and probably will use csh as the default shell. (There are fairly good reasons for this: (1) One of the major pieces of software we are going to use is the Berkeley VLSI design aids. This biases me towards using 4.2. (2) Our users are coming from Tops-20. Thus they are all used to having a shell that handles multiple processes. This biases me towards using csh.) Anyway, the question is: does anyone have a handout to go with Kernighan and Pike for use with 4.2 and/or csh? I have tried the examples in the first chapter, and it seems that most of them work. However there are obviously minor divergences. I guess I can try to find somebody to go through the book and try everything, or assume that our students are bright enough to handle minor problems. But I would like to have some idea of the magnitude of incompatibilities I am going to run into. Are they serious enough to make the book useless? In particular, will a chapter on system calls that is based on 7 be useful with 4.2? -------
gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA (06/17/84)
From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA> The main problem you will have with adapting the shell scripts in Kernighan and Pike to use the cshell is that I/O of a control statement cannot be redirected in csh. There are scripts in the book that depend on this facility. Why encourage the use of csh for shell scripts when you can use the Bourne shell even on 4.2BSD? I.e., modify every Bourne shell script to begin with the line #!/bin/sh and your scripts will use the Bourne shell even when invoked by a cshell user.