[SunHELP] Shell Problem

[Nicholas Dronen]

Naresh:

It's common practice to use a single shell script
both to set environment variables needed by a 
program and to start the program itself.  That is,
if your program is installed in a non-standard
location and it's not convenient to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH
in both /etc/.login and /etc/profile, then you
simply write a shell script that does something
like the following:

#!/bin/sh

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/one:/path/two:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
exec [ program ]

That's one approach of many.  Your requirements may vary.

Regards,

Nicholas Dronen

On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 09:28:58PM -0700, Naresh Narang wrote:
> Hi Nicholas,
> 
>    I am stuck with having to set a library path used by different users
> using different shells like sh, csh, tcsh etc. and they have different
> syntex. Yes, they'll have to source it. There is no common syntex when it
> comes to sh and csh. I think I'll need to create two separate scripts; one
> for users using sh, bash, ksh and one for users using csh, tcsh.
> 
> Thanks,
> Naresh
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nicholas Dronen" <ndronen at frii.com>
> To: <sunhelp at sunhelp.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 6:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [SunHELP] Shell Problem
> 
> 
> > The Bourne and Korn shells set $SHELL.  The C shell sets $shell.
> > But perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves.  What are you
> > trying to do, really?  I think I know, but you don't say
> > exactly.
> >
> > If you want to change a user's environment from within a shell
> > script such that the environment will remain changed after
> > the script "exits," you *must* have the user source the file
> > so it's run in the current shell.
> >
> > Bourne and Korn shell syntax:
> >
> > $ . [ file ]
> >
> > C shell syntax
> >
> > % source [ file ]
> >
> > I think this covers the first part of your confusion.  The second
> > part is this: since Bourne/Korn and the C shell use different syntax
> > for setting environment variables, you need to know which shell
> > the user is using in order to know which syntax to use, but in order
> > to know which shell the user is using, you need to use either Bourne/Korn
> > shell or C shell syntax to check the SHELL or shell environment variables
> > (which isn't actually reliable anyway) or to run a command or whatever,
> > so you're pretty much stuck.
> >
> > And you are stuck.
> >
> > What you *should* do is require that the user *source* a shell script
> > that is named so they can tell which one is intended for them, say,
> > a C shell user.  "Hi.  I use the C shell.  I source foo.csh in order
> > to set environment variables for application X."
> >
> > Mind you, this is just a guess.
> >
> > If the values of the environment variables do not need to survive
> > the execution of the script, then just call the script! :)
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Nicholas Dronen
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 05:23:31PM -0700, Naresh Narang wrote:
> > > Hi
> > >
> > >   I want to set up env. variables based upon the shell a user is
> running, so in order to find what shell a user is using, I have to run a
> script in a Shell say /bin/sh. If I run it using #!/bin/sh to find user's
> shell, every shell behaves differently or if I use other methods to find
> shell then how do I use that shell to set env variable that can be read by
> user's shell and other statements are ignored.
> > >
> > > Basically I want a general script that can set env variables based on
> user's shell syntex.
> > >
> > > Any help is appreciated.
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > Naresh
> > >
> > > -- Naresh
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> 
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