I had a (sort of) similar problem with re-compiling my pkgsrc. I had a
different .bashrc where I has aliased "l" to "ls -la". Well with that
alias, compiling pth-1.4.0 was failing because the shtool in
/usr/pkgsrc/devel/pth/work/pth-1.4.0 uses a case statement with an "l"
option in it. (I use bash exclusively because while it has its moments
with rehashing, unintelligent autocompletion and other tiny
sillinesses, it has the best command-line editing and "feels" nicer.)

Anyway, unbeknownst to me until I beat my head against a wall a couple
of times to clear it, the "l" option was being expanded on line 1280
and I was getting a mysterious syntax error that seemed to make no
sense...

...until I looked sideways at the 'l'. And there was a mental
CONNECT 1200..

"hey that's also an alias. Maybe it's being expanded."

Move the .bashrc crap into .profile, remove all one-letter aliases out
of spite, et voila! Works perfectly.

The Moral of the Story: outwitting myself is very humiliating. :)

> > > The original problem was that processes kept accumulating due to some
> > > looping of a test in one of the subprocesses of /etc/security.  Thanks
> > > to the help of Jeremy Reed and Manuel Bouyer I was able to pin down the
> > > offending routine to "check_rootdotfiles".
> >
> > Do you have the default .profile ?
>
> BINGO!  Mystery solved, except no recollection of how or why.  Gremlins?
> ======
> /etc/security diffs (OLD < > NEW)
> ======
> < # $NetBSD: dot.profile,v 1.6.2.2 2000/11/01 03:15:43 tv Exp $
> > #	$NetBSD: dot.profile,v 1.9.2.2 2000/02/22 22:27:30 he Exp $
>
> With "dot.profile,v 1.9.2.2" off of a nearly identical system everything is
> back to normal.  Hope this trial helps some other old newbie.  Thanks all.
>
> henry nelson
>