0000155: Please revert the behavior introduced as issue #0000110: Incorrect $status value of pipelined commands

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Date Submitted

Last Update

0000155

tcsh

general

public

2011-11-29 15:29

2012-01-16 03:36

Reporter

Angelo Bonet

Assigned To

Christos Zoulas

Priority

normal

Severity

major

Reproducibility

always

Status

resolved

Resolution

fixed

Platform

OS Version

Product Version

HEAD

Target Version

Fixed in Version

6.18.00

Summary

0000155: Please revert the behavior introduced as issue 0000110: Incorrect $status value of pipelined commands

Description

The behavior introduced as part of issue 0000110 is major non-backward compatible csh/tcsh behavior change and it's going to break a lot of existing scripts if it's ever released.

Albeit there seems to be a contradiction between the documentation and the shell's behavior, csh/tcsh has been setting $status the same way for a long, long time (going all the way back csh on Solaris circa mid-1990's).

With that many years under its belt, the behavior should be considered correct -- and the documentation should be considered discrepant (not the other way around).

The $anyerror hook to opt-out of the new behavior is a nice thought, but even that's wrong: if anything, you should have to ask for the new behavior, not have to ask for the legacy behavior. On top of that, there's no single, global place I can set $anyerror and have it affect all of my "#!/bin/csh -f" scripts -- I have to individually modify each one.

My complaint here is not a theoretical one: Redhat has already released some tcsh RPMS with this new behavior and it's broken several of our tcsh infrastructure scripts. So I can tell you firsthand that this change is dangerous and will absolutely break existing scripts.

Unfortunately, Redhat is using the excuse that "upstream" has accepted their patch as part of their justification (along with some other craziness about tcsh needing to be POSIX-shell compliant - which is just plain wrong). So please revert this patch and avert the upcoming disaster that will ensue.

Additional Information

Here's an example of the kind of script that's been running on csh/tcsh correctly for years that will now break with this change:

#!/bin/csh -f
set location = `which notinstalled`
if ($? == 0) then
echo "Great, required software is already installed here: $location"
else
echo "You're missing required software, installing now..."
endif

The change to $status will make this script think that "notinstalled" is actually installed already -- and it breaks.

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2011-11-29 15:29	Angelo Bonet	New Issue
2012-01-16 03:36	Christos Zoulas	Status	new => assigned
2012-01-16 03:36	Christos Zoulas	Assigned To	=> Christos Zoulas
2012-01-16 03:36	Christos Zoulas	Status	assigned => resolved
2012-01-16 03:36	Christos Zoulas	Fixed in Version	=> 6.18.00
2012-01-16 03:36	Christos Zoulas	Resolution	open => fixed

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