Re[2]: Mc Digest, Vol 43, Issue 9

[Pavel Tsekov <ptsekov gmx net>]

Hello wwp,

Saturday, November 24, 2007, 12:57:27 AM, you wrote:

> Hello Pavel,


> On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:47:25 +0200 Pavel Tsekov <ptsekov gmx net> wrote:

>> Hello chris,
>> 
>> Friday, November 23, 2007, 6:54:44 AM, you wrote:
>> 
>> > previous posters wrote:
>> |>>> Do you refer to the notorious "The shell is already running a
>> > command" issue ?
>> 
>> |>> Yes, this one exactly.
>> 
>> > |Ok. Yes - it is really hard to fix. You've been around for many years
>> > |now so I'd expect you to know more about this issue. Anyway...
>> > .... snip ..
>> > | It really is not
>> > |that simple to fix it. And it really isn't and error.
>> > ==================
>> > It's not an error, but it's very annoying.
>> > I.e. it doesn't have a technical solution, but it does
>> > have a 'socio-managment' solution: just make it known up-front
>> > and suggest a work around.
>> 
>> > The problem which is as annoying as "getting a mesg to first
>> > complete some other task, when you want to apply breaks on
>> > your vehicle", and should not be trivialised.
>> 
>> > Only after much frustration did I find a work-around:
>> > * Ctrl O to get 'behind the current ?shell?',
>> > * Ctrl C to stop/attend to the 'problematic proccess',
>> > * ls : just to select some task to confirm that some thing
>> >     can be done,
>> > * Ctrl O to get back to select what was intended to be done.
>> 
>> > It happens to me often after I've gone on-line [dialup] and
>> > a system generated mesg has come to my mail: I can't execute
>> > my intended inet-fetch-script until I acknowledge the damned
>> > mail-mesg by the steps above.
>> 
>> > Many linux users hate mc. Perhaps this quirk is the reason ?
>> 
>> Do you have any evidence which points towards that ?
>> 
>> > If a work-around is made known up-front, this avoids
>> > frustration ?
>> 
>> A workaround such as what ? A possible workaround depends
>> very much on why the messages is displayed. You could
>> have started an interactive program in the shell and
>> forgotton about it, next you type a command in the
>> prompt widget and the error box is displayed ... what should
>> you do about that ? There are different scenarios which
>> my trigger the error message.

> The itchy thing that was my concern, is then the "error" message is
> raised whenever it should NOT be (nothing is running in background -
> BTW it's not mandatorily ctrl+c that I have to press when back to
> subshell, it works w/ [enter]). Someone said in the thread that it's
> not an error message.. I'm OK w/ that assertion, but getting this
> message under certain conditions, *is* erroneous, it's a false positive.

It matters not whether something is running or not. What matters is
that the shell received partial input and that cannot be just fixed
.