zsh compiling on Apple OSX v. 10.4.x

[William Scott <wgscott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks:

When I tried compiling zsh on OSX v. 10.4, I found that the resulting  
zsh, when invoked, did not appear to respond to arrow keys, back- 
spaces and so-forth (I say "appear" because apparently it just  
doesn't update the terminal display).  Following Apple's patch, I  
configured and then edited the file config.h to remove the lines


    391 /* Define to 1 if you have the `poll' function. */
    392 /* #define HAVE_POLL 1 */
    393
    394 /* Define to 1 if you have the <poll.h> header file. */
    395 /* #define HAVE_POLL_H 1 */

Then compiled and installed and the problem went away.

However, I have two questions:

1.  What did I do, and is it harmful?

2.  When root uses zsh (either the one I compiled or the one Apple  
provided) the problem returns.  What's going on with that?

Thanks.

Bill Scott