.cshrc elm and PIDs

[steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn)]

I monitor incoming emails on several user accounts in xterms stacked
in one icewm workspace.  Being long in the tooth I use elm for email
and csh as my shell, and have done since the Dawn of Time.

If a system reboot is needed, setting these (and various other
workspaces) up by hand can be laborious.  So my X startup files are
configured to start a whole bunch of xterms in a handful of
workspaces, and elm is started for the first xterm for each user
account from .cshrc thus:

pgrep -u `id -u` elm 
if ($status == 1) then
elm
    if ($status == 1) then
    CM  
    elm 
    endif
endif   

So we:
- check for the existence of an elm PID, failing which run elm
- if elm fails (always because a temporary file alread exists), use CM
  (a local alias that removes the temporary file)
- run elm

This makes a restart to the point where I can work very much faster.
BUT the PID for the successful elm process keeps showing up in the
text when I'm writing emails, and ~ substitution doesn't work within
elm, e.g. fro reading in the content of signature files (I use vi as
my editor, but I suppose you guessed that).

There is only one further line in the .cshrc files, which is

umask 022

I'm guessing that umask is internal to csh, so elm is the last process
to be started from .cshrc.  But I'd like to understand what's going on
as well as fix it.

-- 
Steve Blinkhorn <steve%prd.co.uk@localhost>