stanonik@NPRDC.ARPA (Ron Stanonik) (09/05/86)
We encountered a puzzling bug in the Transcript 2.0 ptroff. The -t option (output postscript to standout) didn't work when piping into ptroff; eg, tbl file | ptroff -t Reversing the order of the arguments to the test in the while loop seems to cure the problem; eg, while test "" != "$1" rather than while test "$1" != "" Apparently test "$1" != "" with $1 equal -t is interpreted as "check whether the next argument (interpreted as a file descriptor) is a tty", rather than "check the equality of the the strings -t and "". As it happens, the numerical value of != is 0; hence, the -t option worked correctly for ptroff -t file but not for tbl file | ptroff -t or ptroff -t < file Ron Stanonik stanonik@nprdc.arpa