Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

eshell problem: Spawning child process: invalid argument?

131 views
Skip to first unread message

Xah Lee

unread,
May 18, 2012, 8:44:39 PM5/18/12
to
why doesn't this work in eshell?

lynx -dump -display_charset=utf-8 -width=90 http://example.com >
xxxx.html

i get
Spawning child process: invalid argument

then eshell doesn't have any doc, so sad.

Xah

Michael Albinus

unread,
May 19, 2012, 4:31:05 AM5/19/12
to Xah Lee, help-gn...@gnu.org
Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> writes:

> why doesn't this work in eshell?
>
> lynx -dump -display_charset=utf-8 -width=90 http://example.com >
> xxxx.html
>
> i get
> Spawning child process: invalid argument

This doesn't happen to me. When I call it (with another URL), a buffer
*lynx* is opened and scrolls through the HTML page. No error is shown.

Which Emacs version do you use? Are you on a local directory in eshell,
or on a remote one? Running the command on a remote directory returns in
an error for me as well.

> then eshell doesn't have any doc, so sad.

"C-h i g (eshell) <RET>" works for me. It isn't complete, 'though.

> Xah

Best regards, Michael.

Xah Lee

unread,
May 20, 2012, 12:12:08 AM5/20/12
to
On May 19, 1:31 am, Michael Albinus <michael.albi...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
> > why doesn't this work in eshell?
>
> > lynx -dump -display_charset=utf-8 -width=90http://example.com>
> > xxxx.html
>
> > i get
> > Spawning child process: invalid argument
>
> This doesn't happen to me. When I call it (with another URL), a buffer
> *lynx* is opened and scrolls through the HTML page. No error is shown.
>
> Which Emacs version do you use? Are you on a local directory in eshell,
> or on a remote one? Running the command on a remote directory returns in
> an error for me as well.
>
> > then eshell doesn't have any doc, so sad.
>
> "C-h i g (eshell) <RET>" works for me. It isn't complete, 'though.
>
> >  Xah
>
> Best regards, Michael.

hi Michael,

thanks. I've resolved the issue.

On Windows, the command needs to be 「lynx.exe」 . Without the .exe,
eshell gets confused.

Xah

Eli Zaretskii

unread,
May 20, 2012, 11:29:20 AM5/20/12
to help-gn...@gnu.org
> From: Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 21:12:08 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On Windows, the command needs to be 「lynx.exe」 . Without the .exe,
> eshell gets confused.

Probably because you have something else called "lynx.SOMETHING" on
Path that is caught before lynx.exe? A Unix shell script, perhaps?
If none of these guesses is correct, I'd say it's worth digging deeper
and maybe submitting a detailed bug report.


Xah Lee

unread,
May 20, 2012, 4:31:09 PM5/20/12
to
i don't think i got anything else named lynx. In eshell, "which lynx"
turns up c:/cygwin/bin/lynx.exe ... when i call the command it was
generating a buffer called *lynx.exe*, iirc.

every time i try to switch to eshell, always something turns up
stopping me from using it... the lack of doc certainly didn't help.
I'll sure report in the future if i find some issues.

thanks for the extra tip.

Xah
0 new messages