*BSD News Article 63378


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From: ejr@dickens.bra01.icl.co.uk (Ed Randall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Spice build / sh compatable sh?
Date: 11 Mar 1996 16:22:00 GMT
Organization: ICL, Bracknell, UK
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Bob Harbour (bharbour@teleport.com) wrote:
: I am trying to build the spice circuit simulator code and am getting 
: several problems from the freebsd version of sh. Does anybody know of a 
: port of spice for freebsd? Alternately, does anybody know where I could 
: find a version of sh that is backward compatible with older sh syntaxes?
: I am working with spice versions 3e and 3f4 and getting problems with a 
: trap instruction and an unexpected semicolon in the build script.

Aliases, aliases, b****y aliases, I'll bet that's what's screwing you up. 
Someone saw fit to make the new "sh" understand aliases, and if you've got
any that match e.g. patterns in a "case" statement, the damn thing barfs with
the most misleading error messages.
RTFM "sh" and copy the suggested bit of code near the top of there into your
.profile file, such that non-interactive shells don't have any alias 
definitions.

The original Bourne shell didn't support aliases, so this problem never arose.

Hope this helps,

Ed
ed@orlando.demon.co.uk