[ILUG] screen reattach funny

[Niall O Broin]

I've been trying to use screen's -R option which according to the man page

 -R   attempts to resume the first detached screen session it finds.  If 					
successful, all other command-line  options  are  ignored.   If  no  detached  
session exists, starts a new session using the specified options, just as if 
-R had not been specified. The option is set by default if screen is run as a 
login-shell (actually screen uses "-xRR" in that case).  For combinations 
with the -d/-D option see there.


I don't usually leave more than one screen session running on a box, so my 
normal practive, having detached, would be to do   screen -r  but sometimes I 
get the message about several screens found, and I have to specify one.

So, as I don't often deliberately leave > 1 detached screen on a box, I'd like 
to be able to use -R and if that attached to a screen I didn't expect that'd 
be OK, because it'd be a left over screen that I should deal with anyway.

So, from what I've seen on several screen versions, -r and -R work in the same 
way. What meaning of "attempts to resume the first detached screen session it 
finds" is the screen man page using when it describes -R ?

BTW - I know how to use -r, and I know how to use -x - what's puzzling me here 
is only why -R doesn't work as advertised (or as I understand the man page). 

I suppose the question boils down to "Does screen not work as it should with 
-R, or have I completely misunderstood the phrase 'attempts to resume the 
first detached screen session it finds' ?"

-- 
Niall