read from /dev/tty problems

[karl_kleinpaste at cis.ohio-state.edu]

kenj at yarra.oz.au (Ken McDonell) writes:
   Could you please provide some more information on the version of
   OSx in which you see the problem, and the precise conditions under which
   you can make it hapen?

We have the same problem under OSx 4.anything (currently 4.4c, I
haven't bothered to go to 5.0 just yet -- delays, delays) and under
both X10 and X11.  Just start an xterm, any xterm, and you'll find
that /dev/tty is (evidently) not attached to it.  Anything which reads
/dev/tty fails; e.g., just as a quick test, I ran crypt in an X11R4
xterm, got an "Enter key:" prompt which did not wait for me to type
anything.  FTP password prompts do the same thing.  Running "script
/dev/null" in an xterm gets around the problem.

   1. I read news regularly, but have not seen you comments previously (is
      it possible they are not escaping for worldwide distribution?)

This has been discussed here occasionally -- I've mentioned it once or
twice myself.

Is it possible that it works for you because you're running a
Pyr-supplied X11 with probable bug fixes?  Most of us peons just run
the MIT-supplied X distributions.

--karl