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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!brl-vgr!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-vgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: Re:  Shell programming style -- a pl
Message-ID: <2189@brl-vgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 7-Mar-84 02:52:15 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-vgr.2189
Posted: Wed Mar  7 02:52:15 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Mar-84 14:29:04 EST
References: <16945@sri-arpa.UUCP> <34500004@hp-dcd.UUCP>, <1772@rlgvax.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 15

I have come to regret trying to help the novices by suggesting a way to
get the right command interpreter to execute their shell scripts.  The
claim that has been repeated most is that if your script does not start
with a # character the Bourne shell will execute it is FALSE for the
4.2BSD Cshell.  Only under some circumstances does this happen.  We have
seen scripts staring with : get fed to csh, much to the annoyment of the
user.

My original suggestion, that Bourne shell scripts start with #!/bin/sh,
is completely correct for the following UNIX variants:
	4.2BSD
	4.2BSD with BRL UNIX System V emulation
	UNIX System III
	UNIX System V
If you have some other UNIX system, the interesting question is "why?".