bug#9998: emacs 22.3 (and later) breaks C-d (comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof) in shell mode

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

A user (who works at another university with independently-managed
computer systems) just reported to me that C-d does not end input in
shell mode in an emacs session.

I verified the problem locally with emacs 22.3 and 23.3 and 24.0.91.
It works correctly in 22.1.

Was this an intentional change?

The command documentation describes this expected behavior:

    C-d runs the command comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof
    which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in
    `/home/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/comint.elc'.
    It is bound to C-d.
    (comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof ARG)

    Delete ARG characters forward or send an EOF to subprocess.
    Sends an EOF only if point is at the end of the buffer and there
    is no input.

My tests were done with commands like this:

         /usr/local/bin/emacs-22.1 -q --no-site-file &

so as to avoid any influence from private or local startup files.

A temporary workaround in recent emacs versions is a shell HERE-document:

% cat << EOF > outfile
a
b
c
EOF

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------