Re^2: Can I do this ???

[cmv]

grinder++ I agree with you, that parents cooperating with children can cause a change in the parents environment. Hey, that probably holds true in real life as well...

My contribution here is that I implemented something similar, using unix signals. The parent would trap on an unused signal (I used SIGUSR1) and read-in-and-execute all the commands contained in a pre-defined temporary file.

When the child wanted to change something in the parents environment, it would write those changes to the pre-defined temporary file, then would poke-the-parent-in-the-side by sending a signal via the unix kill(1) command.

This worked well for me.

-Craig