Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site genrad.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!genrad!john From: john@genrad.UUCP (John Nelson) Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Re: Shell programming style -- a plea for better shell scripts Message-ID: <3880@genrad.UUCP> Date: Fri, 2-Mar-84 09:54:52 EST Article-I.D.: genrad.3880 Posted: Fri Mar 2 09:54:52 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 3-Mar-84 23:44:38 EST References: <16948@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: GenRad, Bolton, Mass. Lines: 14 > #!/bin/sh > will be treated as a comment by the Bourne shell, so its presence > cannot possibly hurt. Excuse me, but while it may be true that the Bourne shell will treat that line as a comment, any csh running on a system that does not have the "#!" magic number built into the kernal exec will attempt to run that script as a csh script. Csh first attempts to exec a command. If that fails, it examines the first character of the file. If it is a "#", then it runs it as a csh script, otherwise, it runs it as an sh script. That line will do precisely the wrong thing on such a system (like my 68000 unisoft system III).