Shell script for using interpreters

[Richard Tobin]

In article <602 at nunki.usc.edu> sreerang at castor.usc.edu (Sreeranga Rajan) writes:
>I would like to know how I could write a shell script to perform the
>following actions:
>			enter lisp interpreter
>			load all the required files
>			take input from the keyboard after loading
>			the files

This is a common problem, not just for lisp.  There are several solutions,
which work to different extents.  Here are a few:

(1) cat -u file-of-commands - | lisp

This doesn't work very well, as the standard input to lisp is no longer
a terminal, but a pipe.  In particular, typing EOF from a break level
will result in lisp exiting.

(2) lisp << 'EOF'
    (load <filename>)
    (setq piport (infile '/dev/tty))
    'EOF'

I haven't worked out why this doesn't work properly.  There are probably
several other solutions for people familiar with Franz lisp esoterica.

(3) Put something in your .lisprc that processes a command line argument

You can do this with (argv 1).  Doesn't work for people without an
appropriate .lisprc.

(4) Write a C program

Always a winner.  I assume you're using Berkeley unix if you've got
Franz lisp.  You can insert (a certain number) of characters into a
terminal input stream using the TIOCSTI ioctl.  A fragment of a program
to read characters from a file and insert them is:

     int c;
     while((c=getc(infile)) != EOF) ioctl(0, TIOCSTI, (struct sgttyb *)&c);

-- Richard
-- 
Richard Tobin,                         JANET: R.Tobin at uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,             ARPA:  R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed at nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.                  UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin