Very Computer

Hi,

This code which I wrote gives the remote host from which I rlogged
from. Generally wrote this out of curiosity being a unix novice. But I
notice some strange behavior when used in the shell.

Code included below

I use a solaris 2.7 m/c running bash 2.05
Now if I tried something like

a.out 1>/dev/null
as expected no input, infact ttyname fails as stdout is re-directed to
null device

however if I try `a.out` I again get no output, this I found strange.
I thought that by enclosing a unix command in `command` it would just
execute it in a subshell... Is this true...? But it looks like my
output is being re-directed to somewhere else. Shouldn`t running a
command in `` (grave accent?) gaurantee the tty...? or am i doing
something wrong.

I got a workaround by checking each of stdin|stdout|stderr and so far
find that it usually suceeds on atleast one of them... This might just
be pure luck. (included as <diff> </diff> in snippet below)

finally, I am sure, this code can be written in a much better way,
please excuse the poor code :), If there is a better way please let me
know. My main aim was to get this working across all the shells I
have, sh,ksh,bash,zsh,csh

Thanks,
Cheers
Santhosh Kudva

<Code Snip>---------------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <utmpx.h>
#include <unistd.h>

main()
{    
  struct utmpx *ut ;
  int current_user_index = 0 ;
  int flag = 0 ;
  char sttyname[100] ;
  char *tt ;

  while(ut = getutxent())
  {  
      strcpy(sttyname,"/dev/");
      strcat(sttyname,ut->ut_line) ;
      if(ut->ut_type == USER_PROCESS)
      {      
        tt = ttyname(1) ;

        if(tt && !strcasecmp(sttyname,tt) )
        {      
          flag = 1 ;
          fprintf(stdout,"%s\n",ut->ut_host) ;

        }      
      }      
  }  
  if(!flag) fprintf(stdout,"loghost\n") ;

Quote:}    

<diff>
<    tt = ttyname(1) ;

Quote:>    tt=ttyname(0) ;
>    if(!tt) tt = ttyname(1) ;
>       if(!tt) tt = ttyname(2) ;

</diff>
</Code Snip>-------

Stdout is being redirected to a pipe, so that the shell can read it.  How
else do you suppose that the output gets substituted into the command line
instead of being displayed on the terminal?

--

Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Hi,

Thanks for that clarification, I got it. I was thinking, that the
ttyname function should guarantee to give me the terminal name,
whatever be the case.

I figure it will as long as no other program is messing with the file
descriptor in question as was the case with stdin/stdout/stderr. As
you pointed out these descriptors are used by the shell to redirect
output and therefore, got to take that into account.

I guess one way is to open a new fd and check tty on that. Since that
file-descriptor will not be used by any other program. Is there a
better way to find out the tty...?

incidentally, I was able to achieve the same thing with a

who -m | sed 's;.*(\(.*\)).*;\1;g'

Thanks,

-Cheers
Santhosh Kudva