[comp.mail.mh] mh profile switch troubles

obrien@AEROSPACE.AERO.ORG (Mike O'Brien) (08/28/90)

	In the old days of MH, I had thought that the following two lines would
work in concert to let me run an editor with switches:

Editor: /u/obrien/bin/e
/u/obrien/bin/e: -notracks

	This doesn't seem to work any more.  Any notions as to why?

version: MH 6.6 #1[UCI] (solanum) of Fri Mar  2 12:23:08 PST 1990
options: [ATHENA] [BSD42] [BERK] [BIND] [MHE] [MHRC] [NETWORK] [RPATHS]
	 [DUMB] [RPOP] [SENDMTS] [SMTP] [POP] [BPOP]

	Thanks!

Mike O'Brien
The Aerospace Corporation

jdpeek@RODAN.ACS.SYR.EDU (Jerry Peek) (08/28/90)

> 	In the old days of MH, I had thought that the following two lines would
> work in concert to let me run an editor with switches:
> 
> Editor: /u/obrien/bin/e
> /u/obrien/bin/e: -notracks
> 
> 	This doesn't seem to work any more.  Any notions as to why?

The editor program itself, /u/obrien/bin/e, has to know that it should
look in the .mh_profile for switches.  Does your 'e' editor do that?
(MH programs do it by default.)

If your editor doesn't look in .mh_profile, you can make yourself a shell
script in your bin directory and use *that* as the editor.  Put the
switches in that shell script.  For instance, an editor named 'e_notracks'
might have these two lines in it:

	#! /bin/sh
	exec /u/obrien/bin/e -notracks "$@"

Using the "exec" saves a process.  Put this line in your .mh_profile:

	Editor: /u/obrien/bin/e_notracks

--Jerry Peek; Syracuse University Academic Computing Services; Syracuse, NY
  jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu, JDPEEK@SUNRISE.BITNET        +1 315 443-3995

obrien@AEROSPACE.AERO.ORG (Mike O'Brien) (08/28/90)

	Thanks; that does seem to work though I was hoping to avoid it.  It seems
to me that in the old days, MH programs that invoked external programs like "more",
"page" and the editor(s) would check for flag arguments themselves and
provide them as required when invoking such subprograms.  Apparently not any
more, if ever.

Mike O'Brien
The Aerospace Corporation