[Info-vax] Foreign commands ... newbie question

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2011-10-18 15.50, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article<j7ic30$f0d$2 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist<bqt at softjar.se>  writes:
>>
>> The problem that sh and descendants don't have a built-in which. An
>> external which can never see aliases (obviously), since that isn't
>> visible outside the running shell process.
>
>     Not obvious, since child processes often inherit the shell symbols
>     of thier parent.  So a shell process starting a separate which is
>     likley to pass the existing value of aliases to the process running
>     which.

By "inherit shell symbols" I assume you mean the environment variables? 
Local shell symbols are not inherited. They are (as the name implies) local.

bash have a trick, where functions can be placed in environment 
variables, and thereby be inherited by subshells. (I think I've only 
seen that in bash, but perhaps others do a similar trick.)

	Johnny