Re: 4GL replacement for isql menus

Mike Segel wrote: > < snip > > Well, > Lets rethink the problem. > You want to stop the nasty user from shelling out of an > application. Putting it in his/her .profile means that besides > having the above mentioned side effect, the user could always > comment it out and not have to bother with it. > > A better way, is to have the user run a shell script which exports > that shell variable in a child, then calls your Informix program. > > Does this solve your problem, or am I missing something? > > -Mikey And others wrote much the same, one pointing out that we'd been over much the same ground recently. In fact I'd hoped to pick up something useful that time round but didn't. Although I'm grateful for all your comments my original post was by way of being a precise specification. What I need is as good a lookalike as possible to isql -u. We have a long established system (10 years plus) using the good old isql menu system. The average punter (sorry, user) never gets to see a Unix prompt. After setting up the environment variables we dump them straight into the menus. On exit from isql they get logged out. It's not a situation which has given any problems and it's easy to maintain complex menu structures. You could argue that it's too easy as you can quite easily set up circular references and so forth. We now have a directive from very high up that says that applications which rely on keeping the user captive should actually do so (I paraphrase a little). On the other hand the users are used to seeing the familiar menu system and there'll be all the usual arguments if it gets drastically changed. This gives me two alternatives: ignore the directive or provide a mock up as close as possible to the original. Much as I would like to ignore it I can't. Although I looked after the system for most of its 10 years that's no longer my job. Until the end of next month I'm specifically responsible for ensuring the security directives are carried out. The wonderful Mr Leffler emailed me the usual - a package he made earlier. Thanks, Jon, I think you must have been a Blue Peter fan. # You are not expected to understand this line unless you're a Brit. I havn't had time to look at Jon's program yet to see how closely it matches. If it's a good look alike I'll use it. If not I'll reinvent the wheel and, if I'm pleased with the results, find somewhere to save it on the net for everyone else. Ian