Strange behavior of su

[Chris Torek]

> You didn't say to whom you were su'ing. ...  If you were becoming
> another normal user, this probably means the current directory was
> inaccesable to the new user.  In this case, su gives up quietly.

'Tis not su, 'tis csh, the vile wretched beast.  One of the first
things it does is figure out its current directory; if it cannot,
it exits.

Gosling Emacs also used to have this cretinous behaviour.  I changed
it to attempt a getwd, and if that failed, to try first a chdir($HOME)
and finally a chdir(/), warning you along the way that it was unable
to figure out where you were and so (rather than quit or come up
confused) put you elsewhere.  This is perhaps not much better, but
*some* solution was necessary.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at maryland