rees@A.CC.UMICH.EDU (Jim Rees) (06/28/88)
Recently we have been experiencing a problem executing shell scripts that are
located on a SUN server and mounted to an apollo. The problem seems to somehow
involve the path variable...
[ Long confused explanation deleted ]
Yes, this is a bug (or, more charitably, a missing feature). Shell scripts
are normally executed in bsd unix by the kernel, which recognizes the '#!' at
the top and execs the real interpreter. SysV doesn't do this. The exec fails,
and then your shell execs the interpreter itself.
I don't remember why this can't be made to work for the Bourne shell, but
with the csh, the problem is that it's very hard to load the NFS type manager
during the interval between the vfork and the exec (remember that the parent
and child share an address space).
I'm pretty sure this restriction is documented somewhere.
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