Today at 12:25am, Jeremy C. Reed said:
> On Wed, 23 May 2001, Scott Micciche wrote:
>
> > I have a question surrounding blackbox's "sh -c" processes when
> > launching from the menu. I'm not familiar with writing window managers
> > and was wondering why these processes were necessary. I notice other
> > window managers do not use them (fvwm, icewm, windowmaker, etc). Is
> > there some way to eliminate these processes from occurring? Thanks in
> > advance.
>
> I have also wondered about it. One benefit of using "sh -c" is so you can
> have multiple commands with arguments, pipes, output redirection all as
> part of a blackbox menu [exec] entry.
>
> >From looking at twm source, it appears to do the same thing.
>
> As a workaround, I just added "exec " before the command I want to
> start. (I am sure /bin/sh ran, but then the sh process is replaced with
> the specified command.)
>
> I guess it would be good to offer it without /bin/sh also, by simply
> execing the command with its aruments (but no shell functionality
> included).
I may have been the cause for this: I wanted to be able to run commands,
redirections and pipelines from the menu (like bbkeys does it).
However, when running a command through sh -c, the shell will determine if
there is a compound command (pipeline or redir.) or not.
If not, sh -c will not spawn a new process for the command, but instead
replace itself. So:
sh -c 'exec netscape'
yields exactly the same result as:
sh -c 'netscape'
So the shell will not spoil a process if it's not necessary.
It might be an idea to let blackbox decide if a command is compound or
not. That way sh doesn't have to be started with simple commands.
Regards,
Wilbert
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