Re: cron on 10.5.2 server

In article <682fbqF2qd9ofU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Chris Ridd <chrisridd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On 2008-05-03 06:57:18 +0100, Jolly Roger <jollyroger@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
> 
> > In article <682cq3F2qi61hU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> >  Chris Ridd <chrisridd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > 
> >> I wonder if the bug in crontab alluded to at the end is still
present?
> > 
> > My take is that's not a bug, but is just the way it is, because of the
> > way crontab parses the EDITOR environment variable.
> 
> OK, well the "feature" is certainly still in the 10.5.2 code:
> 
>
<http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.2/cron-30/crontab/crontab.c
> >

Are you referring to line 435?:

          execlp(editor, editor, Filename, (char *)NULL);

It does seem strange that they are passing editor (which contains the 
contents of the EDITOR environment variable), in its entirety for the 
first *and* second parameter. The first parameter is supposed to the 
pathname to the executable (edit), and the second parameter is supposed 
to be a list of arguments or switches to pass to the executable (-w). It 
seems they are instead passing "edit -w" and "edit -w" for both 
parameters, which is what causes the error:

# crontab -e
crontab: edit -w: No such file or directory
crontab: "edit -w" exited with status 1

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JR