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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 11:36:50 -0400
To: Martin Oberhuber <martin DOT oberhuber AT windriver DOT com>,
        "'cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com'" <cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
From: "Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)" <lhall AT rfk DOT com>
Subject: Re: ash and bash: Backquotes don't work reliably on Windows
  2000
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 at>
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At 11:19 AM 6/20/2001, Martin Oberhuber wrote:
>Hello,
>
>we have found out that on some Windows 2000 computers (particularly
>very fast laptops with rather slow hard disk), the result of a command 
>in backquotes isn't put into the variable associated reliably. A 
>command like 
>
>UNAME=`uname`
>
>will return the correct result most of the time, but will sometimes 
>return an EMPTY result! It looks like a race condition where the 
>shell tries to read the program's output before the subprocess for
>uname is finished... This is extremely annoying and makes it 
>impossible to write reliable shellscripts!
>
>The problem is very hard to reproduce. It seems to turn up only
>on few computers, and only with lots of disk access around the
>"backquote sections".
>
>Is this problem already known, and what can we do to fix it?
>
>I can try and put together a simple shellscript for reproducing
>the problem, if needed.



This is not a known issue.   You're best bet is to try to debug it and
inform the list of your findings.  I'm sure anyone else with ideas to
help you will chime in as appropriate.



Larry Hall                              lhall AT rfk DOT com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      http://www.rfk.com
118 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
Holliston, MA 01746                     (508) 893-9889 - FAX


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