Re: bash and make are trapped in an endless loop

[Eric Blake <ebb9 at byu dot net>]

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According to Christian Matuszewski on 6/27/2005 5:42 AM:
> Hi,
> 
> if i start a fresh cygwin shell and I enter an asterisk at the prompt:
> $ *
> then nothing happens. That's OK, although one could expect a message like:
> "bash: *: command not found".

Typing * as your command normally expands into a list of all the files in
that directory, then tries to execute the first file in that list (try
"echo *" to see what would happen).  Your desired error message will only
occur if filename expansion is disabled, such as by using "set -f".

Beyond that, the behavior that you get from typing * (or letting make type
it), depends on your current directory.  Based on your report, I'm
guessing that your first directory was empty, or started with a file that
was executable and did nothing; but when you switched to the directory
where your Makefile was, you happened to get a first filename listed that
was treated as a program and which entered into an infinite loop (the
infinite string of y's tends to imply that somewhere you invoked
/bin/yes).  But this behavior is not unique to cygwin.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9@byu.net
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