Red Hat Linux systems ship with a shell script for /usr/bin/play, which serves as a wrapper around the /usr/bin/sox program. The shell script's use of $1 rather than "$@", however, causes /usr/bin/play to reject any attempts at using command line options. Since many programs assume that "play" supports the "-v" option to set volume, the use of $1 rather than "$@" causes those programs to produce error messages rather than audio output. (Exmh, a graphical front-end to the MH mail system shipped with Red Hat Linux, is one example of a program that tries to use "play -v" to play .au files.) The patch included here modifies /usr/bin/play to be a better imitation of traditional "play" programs. --- /usr/bin/play Thu Aug 29 18:38:51 1996 +++ /tmp/play Mon Jan 25 06:59:45 1999 @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@ #!/bin/sh -/usr/bin/sox $1 -t .au - > /dev/audio +/usr/bin/sox "$@" -t .au - > /dev/audio (This was reported to me on a system which the author described as "5.x". I have verified the bug on a 4.2 system. "rpm -q -f /usr/bin/play" reports "sox-11g-5".) Sincerely, Jacob Morzinski jmorzins
using play -v works for me on a 5.9 system.