PROBLEM:

	Linux ksh behaves differently than Solaris, HP-UX or AIX ksh in that you are limited
	to a command line input of about 77 characters including the prompt.    This is a real
	pain if you like a prompt that describes who, what where and when.  


SOLUTION:

	A "resize" ( /usr/X11R6/bin/resize ) normally fixes this issue when changing the
	size of your terminal.  It does in bash and in some variants of ksh that I've used
	on other distributions of Linux.   

	What finally worked was exporting the COLUMNS variable manually instead
	of expecting resize to update the variable.

THE BUG:   it appears that the "resize" command in ksh has a bug in NOT exporting the
		resized variable COLUMNS.   It works in Solaris and in bash!

SOLUTIONS:
	1) at the command line:
		/usr/X11R6/bin/resize | grep COLUMNS= | awk -F= '{print "export "$2}'

alternate:
		export COLUMNS=x

	2) in the .profile

		hard code width:  export COLUMNS=x

or BETTER:  (in .profile or .kshrc

/usr/X11R6/bin/resize | grep COLUMNS= | awk -F= '{print "export COLUMNS="$2}' > .setcolumn ; \
 perl -pi -e 's/;//g' .setcolumn ; . ./.setcolumn 

==================================================================================================

PROOF of BUG in resize and solution:
=====================================
# export COLUMNS=97
# env | grep COLUMN
COLUMNS=97
# resize
COLUMNS=141;
LINES=46;
export COLUMNS LINES;
# env | grep COLUMN
COLUMNS=97
# export COLUMNS=141
# env | grep COLUMN
COLUMNS=141

----------------------------------------------------
     john meister   UNIX Systems Administrator
----------------------------------------------------