Re: why is the - modifier useful

Martijn Dekker <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.shells.zsh.devel,gmane.comp.shells.zsh.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Op 22-07-2025 om 03:46 schreef Bart Schaefer:
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 2:19 PM Martijn Dekker <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> All the POSIXy shells care to this day, zsh included. So does tcsh.
> 
> True, but that's not quite the same as it being useful.  The shells
> all have other options to make them login shells ...

Yes. I didn't think quite all of them do, but I was wrong about that -- even 
dash has an -l option. It's not in POSIX though.

Ah. Found one: NetBSD sh doesn't have -l :-)

>  are there any
> other commands that need to be prefixed with a "-" in order to be
> treated as a login, either themselves or by some other thing examining
> the process list?

Not that I know of. Nor would this makes much sense, because the original idea 
is that the `-` is prepended by login(1) as it launches the login shell. 
Someone somewhere is probably using it in a script though...

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