stty: : Not a typewriter

[Rex Fowler]

In article <1991Mar7.130721.4475 at dms3b1.uucp> dave at dms3b1.UUCP (Dave Hanna) writes:
>In article <1496 at das13.snide.com> dave at das13.snide.com (Dave Snyder) writes:
>>= For example: when in vi, I like to read in the current date & time by typing
>>= "!!date".  What that does is fork a shell, run date and the output of date is
>>= read into the buffer (see example below).
>>= 
>>= Wed Mar  6 07:31:23 EST 1991
>   
>>= Now for some strange reason, this is what I get when I type "!!date".
>   
>>= stty: : Not a typewriter
>>= Wed Mar  6 07:38:47 EST 1991
>
>I've bumped into the same problem.  It seems to come from the 'stty'
>statement in your .kshrc, which, I assume, is run everytime a new
>ksh is started.  Apparently, the ksh is started with stdin being
>redirected somehow to come from the editor buffer, and so stty doesn't
>like it.
>
>I've gotten rid of it by adding "shell=/bin/sh" to my EXINIT environment
>variable.  That causes sh instead of ksh to be used for any "!" actions.
>However, I'm not really satisfied with that solution, because sh doesn't
>understand "~/" notation, so I have to use $HOME (e.g., ":r $HOME/.signature")
>which is annoying.
>

Yuck...
And doesn't your mailer or poster add your .signature for you anyway?

>I'd be real interested if anybody has a better analysis and/or solution.
>
>>David A. Snyder @ Snide Inc. - Folcroft, PA
>
>
>-- 
>Dave Hanna,  Infotouch Systems, Inc. |  "Do or do not -- There is no try"
>P.O. Box 584, Bedford, TX 76095      |                        - Yoda
>(214) 358-4534   (817) 540-1524      |
>UUCP:  ...!letni!dms3b1!dave         |

The easy answer is:

:r !date
instead of
!!date

The right answer is:
No matter which shell you are using ksh/csh/sh, you should only execute
certain commands when you are starting an interactive shell.  

In .kshrc you can do:

----------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -t 0 ] then
stty quit  intr  kill  erase  -noflsh ixon ixoff
any_other_commands_that_are_necessary_only_for_interactive_shells
fi
----------------------------------------------------------------

No manual handy, but i believe this tests to see if the shell is connected
to a tty.  I grabbed this off a recent discussion in comp.unix.shell.  Some 
claimed it worked, some claimed it didn't.  It works for me.  There are similar
commands for other shells.  I believe there was a more correct way posted
for ksh but I just went back to check and it must've already expired.

-- 
Rex Fowler <rmfowler%texrex at cirr.com>
UUCP:  egsner!texrex!rmfowler