Re: weird pipe behaviour!

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Sat, Dec 25, 1999 at 11:34:39PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 25, 1999 at 09:42:21PM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> > (don't really understand fifos - I thought the 2nd cat command would
> > still be blocked...)
> 
> I thought both would unblock. It doesn't seem to be consistent though.
> 
> > process is blocked - why is this so different from zsh/bash???  I
> 
> Good question!

csh and tcsh are known to have brain damaged (as in broken by design)
handling of redirection.  do not be surprised by any weirdness in
redirection with csh/tcsh.  tcsh fixed a lot of csh's bugs but many had to
remain to retain compatibility with csh's brokenness.

i'm sure you've encountered the "csh considered harmful" document by Tom
Christiansen...but here's the URL for it again:

   http://language.perl.com/versus/csh.whynot

scripting in csh/tcsh is a bad idea. tcsh may make a decent interactive
shell(*) but it should not be used as a scripting language. use zsh instead
if you insist on a c-like scripting language. even better, use perl.

alternatively, just use sh/bash for small or simple scripts and perl or
python or C (or whatever) for more complex stuff.


(*) IMO it's not even that good as an interactive shell. both bash and
zsh are much better.

craig

--
craig sanders