Category : OS/2 Files
Archive   : BASH.ZIP
Filename : README.OS2

Hey Emacs this is -*- text -*-

NOTE: If you do not have a directory containing emx.dll, emxio.dll,
and emxlibc.dll in the LIBPATH statement of your CONFIG.SYS,
Please add the directory \dll contained in this archive
to your LIBPATH.

This file will List problems and fixes and new features for OS/2.


Known inconsistencies.

* (unix style) Jobs and background proccess are not ported
(see Launch below)
* cannot exec a pm application
* shell scripts must end in .sh
* ...

New Features of BASH/2

* DRIVE environment Variable contains the current drive
* \x \X In the prompt will include the drive in lower and upper case
* changing directories to a drive (ie. cd c:/os2)
(see below on how to make c: work)
* To get the hostname define (SYSTEMNAME) in config.sys
* To get the user name define (LOGNAME) in config.sys
* two new Environment variables:
bash_spec - contains the name of the program to use to interpret .cmd & .bat
if the values is not set it will be set from COMSPEC
spec_options - contains the options to pass to bash_spec. the default is /c

The variables come in handy when you want to run .cmd and .bat files
in a certain command procceser. Let's say you were using 4OS2 and you
want you subshells from application to 4OS2 shell and you want you .cmd
& .bat file to be processed bye com.exe. Setting bash_spec will allow
you to accomplish this.

* New built in type of fstype [ drive ]. With no arguments it will return the
file system type for the current drive. The return values are HPFS,FAT,LAN,
CDFS, NFS
example:
if [ `fstype c:` = "HPFS" ] then
echo "Cool, FAT Free" > foo.fi.foum
else
echo "FAT is bad for you health" > foo.fat
fi

*** New the week of 11/13/92 *****
* when using a fat file system just rename the startup files without the dots
(hpfs: .bashrc fat: bashrc)

* New builtin launch
allows you to launch a program in another session. The following options
are available:
-d detach run the specified program without input or output.
-w wait wait for the program to finish. The program runs in
a windowed foreground session
-b background run the program in a different session in the background
the default is foreground.
-n noclose don't close the window when the program is done.
-f fullscreen run the program in a fullscreen session

* Arrow, home, delete keys work as expected
Pageup and Pagedown work the sames as Meta-< and Meta->.
(top and bottom of history)
Alt key will work like Meta is some cases.

* New Builtin dpwd
usage `dpwd c' returns the working directory of a drive. This is useful
to put in .bashrc as an alias (alias c:='cd `dpwd c`') to simulate
the drive change command of OS/2.


Strangeness

* when executeing a shell script with a #!/bin/foo make sure the slashes
are backslashed (ie. #!\bin\foo) unless you use the extension for the forward
slashed (ie. #!/bin/foo.exe)