Re: /usr/bin/env and guile
Michael Vanier (mvanier@bbb.caltech.edu)
Sat, 15 Nov 1997 13:02:06 +0800
>
> Michael Vanier <mvanier@bbb.caltech.edu> cited below with "MV" writes:
>
> MV> Is it possible to start up a guile script with /usr/bin/env? I tried this
> MV> but it didn't work on my system:
>
> MV> #!/usr/bin/env guile -s
> MV> !#
>
> MV> ...
>
> MV> This prints out an error message, apparently because guile thinks that the
> MV> name of the file is a switch. Is there a workaround? Is this a bug or
> MV> just a missing feature? It's certainly easier to use env than to type a
> MV> long filename (not to mention more portable).
>
> It is highly unportable if you assume that an OS supports more than one
> argument with the `#!' feature. The only system which does it is AFAIK
> FreeBSD, some systems pass only the first argument, while other systems
> pass the remaining line after the first space as the first argument to
> the program. The only thing which would help Guile are hacks like Tcl's
>
> #! /bin/sh
> #\
> exec wish $0 ${1+"$@"}
>
Well, this is on Solaris, and I tried the same approach on perl and python
for comparison. Interestingly, python ignored the extra arguments (as does
guile) but perl somehow figured out a way to use them even with
/usr/bin/env. I don't know if this generalizes to other OSs. The other
difference with perl and python is that you don't need the extra arguments,
whereas in guile you do.
> BTW, do not write `#!/', always write `#! /' (including the whitespace).
> There are systems out there treating the first 4 bytes of an executable
> as a magic binary number.
>
> --
> Ralph
>
Right. I normally do that anyway.
Mike