Re: Bash manual - interactive shell definition

[Ken Irving]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 09:16:05AM +0000, Marc Herbert wrote:
> >> Could this sentence:
> >>
> >> "An interactive shell is one started without non-option arguments,
> >> unless -sis specified, without specifying the
> >> -c option, and whose input and error output are both connected to terminals
> >> (as determined by isatty(3)), or one started with the -i option. "
> >>
> >> be any more confusing?
> > 
> > Is seems pretty clearly stated to me.
> 
> Please enlighten us with the priority of English boolean operators.
> 
> I have never seen a natural language sentence with so many boolean operators.

Well I can try.

    An interactive shell is one started without non-option arguments,

If there are any arguments then they must be options...

    unless -s is specified,

bash(1) says: "If the -s option is present ... then commands are read
from the standard input", which clearly is not interactive. 

    without specifying the -c option,

The -c option is accompanied by a string containing the commands to be run,
so the shell is not interactive.

    and whose input and error output are both connected to terminals (...),

Without which there'd be nothing for it to interact with.

    or one started with the -i option.

This option would seem to override the other