afzal@cui.unige.ch (Afzal Ballim) (04/17/91)
X Window System Bug Report
xbugs@expo.lcs.mit.edu
VERSION:
R4
CLIENT MACHINE and OPERATING SYSTEM:
All
DISPLAY TYPE:
All
WINDOW MANAGER:
All
AREA:
Xrm, Xt[App]Initialize (depending on how you look at it)
SYNOPSIS:
Executable for an X Window application cannot contain the symbol "."
in its name if it is using the Resource Manager.
DESCRIPTION:
Okay, so some will not consider this a bug, but to the best of my
knowledge it is not documented anywhere and I spent a frustrating
time tracking this down. The character "." is significant to the resource
manager, and so cannot be used as the name of an application. As the
name of an application is taken from argv[0], this means that the
executable cannot contain the character "." in its name. If you are used
to setting resources by application class, then this can cause perplexing
problems because they work fine (you explicitly state the application
class), however command-line options using the "options" feature of
XtInitialize/XtAppInitialize will not work.
REPEAT BY:
Rename any executable to have a "." in its name.
SAMPLE FIX:
Never under any circumstances use a "." in the name of the executable
of an X Window application. My preferred fix, however, is to allow
explicit setting of application names, and not use argv[0].