[Haskell-beginners] "system" call uses a different shell, or does not pick up the whole environment

[Hong Yang]

Hi,

I am trying to mimic mapM() at shell command line. I define the interface
as "mapm cmd2 cmd1," so cmd2 will be run for each of the cmd1 results. "$_"
can be used inside cmd2 to represent the current cmd1 result.

For example, the command
        mapm    'cp -pr $_ destination_dir/$_'    ls
copies everything under the current directory to the destination directory.

The code is as follows:

--
module Main where

import System.Environment ( getArgs )
import System.Exit
import System.IO
import System.Process
import Text.Regex
import Text.Regex.Posix

main = do
    hs_argv <- getArgs
    if length hs_argv /= 2
      then
        putStrLn "wrong arguments!" >> exitFailure
      else do
        let [cmd2, cmd1] = hs_argv
        (_, hOut, hErr, _) <- runInteractiveCommand cmd1
        err <- hGetContents hErr
        hClose hErr
        if null err
          then do
            out <- hGetContents hOut
            mapM (f cmd2) (lines out)
          else
            putStr err >> exitFailure

f :: String -> String -> IO ExitCode
f cmd2 item = system cmd2'
  where cmd2' = if cmd2 =~ "\\$\\_"::Bool
                then subRegex (mkRegex "\\$\\_") cmd2 item
                else cmd2
--

It works, except one issue that is bothering me.

If I issue
        mapm    'lt $_'    ls,
I get a bunch of
        /bin/sh: lt: command not found,
while I expect it act the same as
        mapm    'ls -Alrt --color=auto $_'    ls,
because "lt" is aliased to "ls -Alrt --color=auto."

Notice "/bin/sh" above. My shell is actually tcsh. All the aliases are in
~/.cshrc.

I tried replacing "system cmd2'" with
        system ("source ~/.cshrc; " ++ cmd2')
    and
        system ("tcsh -c " ++ "'source ~/.cshrc; " ++ cmd2' ++ "'"),
but they did not solve the problem.

Can someone please help me?

Thanks,

Hong
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