Re: inputrc issue

[Mike Miller]

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, John W. Eaton wrote:

> Looking at the definition of rl_read_init_file in bind.c from
> readline, I see
>
>  /* Do key bindings from a file.  If FILENAME is NULL it defaults
>     to the first non-null filename from this list:
>       1. the filename used for the previous call
>       2. the value of the shell variable `INPUTRC'
>       3. ~/.inputrc
>     If the file existed and could be opened and read, 0 is returned,
>     otherwise errno is returned. */
>  int
>  rl_read_init_file (filename)
>       const char *filename;
>  {
>    /* Default the filename. */
>    if (filename == 0)
>      {
>         filename = last_readline_init_file;
>         if (filename == 0)
>           filename = sh_get_env_value ("INPUTRC");
>         if (filename == 0)
>           filename = DEFAULT_INPUTRC;
>      }
>
>    if (*filename == 0)
>      filename = DEFAULT_INPUTRC;
>
>  #if defined (__MSDOS__)
>    if (_rl_read_init_file (filename, 0) == 0)
>      return 0;
>    filename = "~/_inputrc";
>  #endif
>    return (_rl_read_init_file (filename, 0));
>  }
>
> This function is called with filename == NULL from
> readline_initialize_everything, which is called the first time
> readline is called.  My guess is you have INPUTRC set to
> "/etc/inputrc" in your environment .  Maybe that is done in
> /etc/profile on your system?
>
> I had assumed that readline was looking in /etc/inputrc then
> ~/.inputrc, but that's apparently not what happens.  Instead, it is
> only reading one file at startup time.


It looks like you figured this one out too, John!  I'm using tcsh on Red 
Hat Linux and this is in the default /etc/csh.login file that came with 
the system:

if ( -f $HOME/.inputrc ) then
        setenv INPUTRC /etc/inputrc
endif

I guess I don't understand the reason for that section because it looks 
like it is saying that if ~/.inputrc is a plain file, the environment 
variable INPUTRC should be set to /etc/inputrc so that ~/.inputrc will not 
be read.

This does explain something strange that I noticed before.  When I 
installed a ~/.inputrc earlier, it worked fine.  Later, after the machine 
was rebooted due to a power failure, I installed the new Octave and it did 
not use the ~/.inputrc, but neither did the old Octave.  How could that 
be?  Well, restarting meant sourcing the /etc/csh.login file which then 
detected ~/.inputrc and set INPUTRC to /etc/inputrc.  It seems crazy.

Can anyone see the need for that section of /etc/csh.login above?

Anyway, tcsh is good but I'm working on switching everything to bash now.

Best,

Mike



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------