Scott McMillan enscribed:
| On 22 Jan 2004 19:47:44 GMT, "Chris F.A. Johnson"
| <c.fa.johnson@rogers.com> wrote:
|
| >On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 at 18:52 GMT, Scott McMillan wrote:
| >> Hello all,
|
| <snipped>
| >>
| >> # more test
| >> #!/bin/sh
| >> cd /tmp
| >> COPY="copy -omv"
| >> $COPY /mnt/tst1.txt sdm1
| >> IFS=``
| >> $COPY /mnt/tst1.txt sdm2
| >>
| <snipped>
| >>
| >> # /mnt/test
| >> copy file /mnt/tst1.txt
| >> /mnt/test: copy -omv: not found
| >
| > Because there is no delimiter in IFS, there is nothing to split
| > $COPY into a command and its arguments. The entire value of the
| > variable is parsed as the command.
| >
| >> # ls -l /tmp
| >> total 2
| >> -rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 29 Jan 22 08:20 sdm1
| >>
| < snipped own ignorance :-) >
|
| Ah, yes, I think I see it now. At the point that I set IFS=``, the
| rest of the script is using NUL to separate ALL of the fields. I had
| not considered that as I wrote the post.
|
| Thank you for pointing this out to me, Chris. Next question:
| To maintain my variables through the rest of my script, could I do
| something like
| ORGIFS=$IFS
| IFS=``
| ... do some stuff
| IFS=$ORGIFS
|
| or do I risk the same problem? AFAIK, IFS is initially set to space.
| I suppose it would be just as easy to do IFS=` ` (set to space).

Do this:
oldIFS=$IFS
IFS=$oldIFS

If you reset it to a space, you may be in for a surprise. The default
IFS are space, tab and newline.

tom
--
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Tom Parsons tom@tegan.com
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