system(), shell, & stderr.

[Francesco Potorti`]

   I have no control over which shell "system(cmd)" executes cmd in.
   It is whatever login shell the user has.

Seems not.  I have ksh as login shell, but
system("echo $0") --> "sh"

   Perhaps, an optional argument could be added to "system" to set 
   the shell, or some global variable. (SHELL)

Yes.

   Also, perhaps system should have a mech. for trapping stderr,
   like it already does for stdout.

Not a bad idea.

   Without, reducing to a two-line shell script I can't see a way
   to redirect stderr shell-independently.

Why not:
system("sh -c 'date 2>/dev/null'") --> Mon Aug 28 11:34:32 MET DST 1995

However, it looks like this is not necessary, because system() always
uses sh, on the alpha precompiled binary I use.
--
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