[GRASS-dev] [bug #4960] (grass) gis.m has menu entries for nonexisting modules

[Glynn Clements]

Michael Barton wrote:

> Glynn's right. I got ahead of myself in encouraging this fix. Making a
> better error trapping is a good idea. However this script can't just look in
> $GISBASE/bin, it also has to look in $GISBASE/scripts and $GISBASE/etc/gm(or
> dm)/script.

And, as I already mentioned, a given command may or may not have a
.exe suffix. E.g. in the MinGW versions which I've built, programs
only get a .exe suffix if they don't contain any dots. OTOH, it's
possible to build an executable with no dots and without a .exe
suffix, and equally possible for an individual Makefile to force a
.exe suffix on any executable.

More generally, trying to figure out in advance whether executing a
given command will succeed is the wrong approach. The only reliable
approach is to actually run the command and check whether or not it
did succeed. If it didn't succeed, figuring out why isn't entirely
straightforward, as the error message (corresponding to ENOENT) will
vary between platforms, and depend upon the user's locale settings.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>