On Dec 27, 2007 10:15 AM, Kris Buelens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I guess we should have asked from the beginning why David needed to
> know the caller of an exec, enabling a more precise answer, or even
> other, easier alternatives.

Yep. ask why he needed it, and make him reconsider

FTPG: I personally do not recall one situation where I exploited this
information and did not regret it later ;-)  One of the "smart"
examples is VMLINK that hides messages when I invoke it from inside a
dumpscan macro. Very inconvenient when the macro produces output in
line mode and you get the VMLINK messages out-of-order depending on
the number of messages.

The Linux shell uses similar things to have programs produce different
output depending on whether stdout is redirected (like display data
column-wise). I am not sure that is the right approach. But leaving
the choice to the "shell" means no program can be smarter than the API
that the shell provides.

Rob

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