Thanks for the speedy reply. I checked the RedHat src rpm and they
do enable NON_INTERACTIVE_LOGIN_SHELLS which explains why the
versions I built myself behaved differently from the system bash.
- todd
On Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:31:55 EDT, Chet Ramey wrote:
> On 6/27/11 11:28 AM, todd.mil...@courtesan.com wrote:
>
> > Machine Type: x86_64-unknown-openbsd4.9
> >
> > Bash Version: 4.2
> > Patch Level: 10
> > Release Status: release
> >
> > Description:
> > Newer versions of bash appear to ignore the '-' in argv[0]
> > when the "-c" option is specified. That is, for:
> > char *argv[] = { "-bash", "-c", "id", NULL };
> > bash used to run as a login shell and source .bash_profile.
> > I've verified that bash 3.00.15 behaves as expected but
> > bash 3.2 and 4.2 require that the "-l" option be specified
> > even though argv[0] indicates that it should be a login
> > shell. Is this change in historical behavior intentional?
>
> Yes. It's a compile-time option (NON_INTERACTIVE_LOGIN_SHELLS, which is
> off by default) and has been that way for almost 15 years. The change
> log says that option was added before bash-2.02; the code is the same in
> bash-3.0. The thinking was that allowing non-interactive login shells
> that sourced startup files intended to be run when interactive (e.g.,
> .bash_profile) caused more harm than good, and that non-interactive
> shells shouldn't be running any startup files in general.
>
> > All other Borne-type shells I've tried have the historical
> > behavior.
>
> Bash behaves that way when run in Posix mode.
>
> Chet
> --
> ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
> ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
> Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU c...@case.edu http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
>
