On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Cameron Laird wrote:

> In article <985684788.135533.1517.nullmailer / ev.netlab.zetabits.com>,
> Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz / zetabits.com> wrote:
> >HI,
> >
> >In message "[ruby-talk:13231] Running external command in sequential order"
> >    on 01/03/27, Paul Pladijs <ppladijs / cage.rug.ac.be> writes:
> >
> >|The system method of the Kernel module creates a subshell,
> >|starts the requested command (= parameter of system method).
> >|After creating  the subshell, the following statements of
> >|the ruby script are executed. So, after invoking the system
> >|method, two processes (the ruby interpreter and the subshell)
> >|are running in parallel, at least in a multitasking
> >|environnement. (I hope this is correct)
> >
> >system function in Ruby waits the process to terminate.  So it's just
> >like system2 you desired.
> >
> >							matz.
> 
> Mr. Pladijs has been asking this in at least a couple of
> newsgroups.  I'll attempt a bit of clarification.  I hope
> I dispel, not increase, the muddiness.

I certainly did not. I've only mailed the question to 
ruby-talk, once. So, there must be a misunderstanding or a
malfunction.

> 
> Mr. Pladijs, your comments on the parallel action of
> system are NOT correct for Ruby and Python (or Tcl or
> Perl or ...).  The basic external-command-invocation in
> each of these libraries is sequential and synchronous, as
> what you labeled "system2" in your original post.

I was only asking something because there was something
weird happening. Today, I tried to reproduce this weird
behaviour but I didn't succeed. Probably I had a brain-
overload (programmed & studied to much) two days ago. 

Maybe I didn't check everything carefully enough, before
I posted the question, and I'm sorry for this. I really
try to take care of such things but I am not perfect (just
like everybody else).


Regards,
Paul.