Bug#219386: system() failing when SHELL is empty

[Bram Moolenaar]

Stefano -

> On Sun, Oct 16, 2005 at 06:40:18PM +0200, Bram Moolenaar wrote:
> > Hmm, why would $SHELL be empty?  Sounds quite unusual to me.  Quite a
> > few things would break, I suppose.
> 
> It happened in the past with some versions of bash.
> 
> However, I think the point is rather that if vim already knows that a
> dummy value of the SHELL variable wont work (the empty string is just an
> example, a string of spaces would be the same I suppose) then it should
> reject it and use a sane default. What do you think?

I already check for an empty string in Vim 7.  Not for a string that is
white space.  I wouldn't know how to set $SHELL to all white space
without explicitly doing so.  It doesn't make sense, we also don't check
for leading or trailing white space in the $SHELL value.

Using environment variables should be consistent.  I think most places
now check for an empty string.  I think that's sufficient.

- Bram

-- 
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

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