Re: Interactive behaviour

[Gary V. Vaughan]

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Hi Eric,

On 20 Sep 2006, at 13:56, Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Stepan Kasal on 9/20/2006 5:21 AM:
> > Hello,
> >   current CVS version of m4 sets interactive mode iff the stdin is a
> > tty.  I think it would be better to set interactive mode iff the
> > stdin, the stdout, and the stderr are a tty.  (Something like the
> > patch below.)
>
> How about something like what POSIX requires of sh (where, of  
> course, m4's
> - -e takes the place of sh's -i)?
>
> "If the -i option is present, or if there are no operands and the  
> shell's
> standard input and standard error are attached to a terminal, the  
> shell is
> considered to be interactive."
>
> As far as I can see, the only reason --interactive is -e instead of  
> -i is
> due to command-line compatibility with SysV implementations such as
> Solaris m4.  But should I add -i as a synonym for -e as a followon  
> patch?

Yes, I think that is an excellent idea.  From http://www.gnu.org/prep/ 
standards/html_node/Option-Table.html:

`interactive'
      `-i' in `cp', `ln', `mv', `rm'; `-e' in `m4'; `-p' in `xargs';
      `-w' in `tar'.

So, `-i, --interactive' in help, with `-e' as a silent compatibility  
option
seems sanest to me.  We might want to Cc: Karl Berry in on the patch  
incase
he wants to amend the GCS document?

> It didn't help that NEWS didn't mention when -b was added.   
> Fortunately,
> CVS sleuthing isn't too hard, and I found it in version 1.10 of  
> main.c in
> Aug 2001, the same month as the mythical 1.4q release (and since I  
> haven't
> seen a 1.4q tarball, I just documented it for the upcoming 1.9b).

My bad.  I was in the process of taking over m4 from Rene, and we both
thought the other would make the release.

Cheers,
        Gary
- --
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  gary@ 
{lilith.warpmail.net,gnu.org},address@hidden
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://blog.azazil.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/{libtool,m4}
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook




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