[uw.mfcf.bugs] showpath seems to remove duplicates, but man page doesn't say

jmsellens@watdragon.waterloo.edu (08/25/89)

From: "John M. Sellens" <jmsellens>

At least not that I could find.

rbutterworth@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ray Butterworth) (08/26/89)

> From: "John M. Sellens" <jmsellens>

> Subject: Re: showpath seems to remove duplicates, but man page doesn't say
> At least not that I could find.


> Subject: showpath moves directories to the end of the path
> if PATH is a:b:c
> then
>   showpath current a
> seems to spit out b:c:a which to me seems kind of wrong.
> When I've used this, I haven't meant to change the order of things,
> I just wanted some way to guarantee that a particular directory
> was in there, but not to override the user's preferences.

This is now documented in the man page
(only on watmath until someone distributes the package).

If you ask for
   setenv PATH=`showpath $HOME/bin standard x11`
and then later say
   setenv PATH=`showpath x11 current $HOME/bin`
it almost certainly indicates that you want x11 to be at the
beginning of your search rules and $HOME/bin to be last.
At least that is what people wanted when they complained that
the original version simply stripped duplicates without giving
any priority to how they were generated.


Note that at the moment showpath doesn't complain about duplicates
when it strips them (while searchpath does unless you ask it not to).
It seemed like more trouble that it was worth.
Does anyone think it should issue warnings about it?