From bug-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Fri Jan 28 14:50:45 2000
Subject: undesired behavior of system()
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Martin Buenner <Martin dot Buenner at epcos dot com>
Cc: bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 14:51:12 -0600 (CST)

On 28-Jan-2000, Martin Buenner <Martin dot Buenner at epcos dot com> wrote:

| I noticed a problem with [out,stat]=system('program'), there 'program'
| is a executable shell-command. From time to time, 'system()' returns a
| return code 'stat' not equal to zero, even if 'program' had no problems.
| 
| I verified the behavior with
| (1) GNU Octave, version 2.0.14 (hppa1.1-hp-hpux10.20) 
| on a HP work station with HP-UX B.10.20 A 9000/778
| (2) GNU Octave, version 2.0.14 (alpha-suse-linux-gnu)
| on a Linux 2.2.10 i686, pre-compiled by Suse.
| 
| For testing the return code of the shell script, I run
| 
|   N=0;for i=1:10000,[out,stat]=system('ls');if stat,N++,endif;endfor 
| 
| N will vary if you start that sequence several times. For example:
| In case (1) the result of two runs had been: N = 30,  N = 28
| In case (2) the result of two runs had been: N = 685, N = 688 
| 
| For further information I attach two files including the values of
| octave_config_info 
| on my HP-installation, as well as on Linux.

OK, I was able to reproduce this problem with 2.0.14, but not with
2.0.15 or the current development sources.

So I think the problem has already been fixed.

Thanks,

jwe



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