A new shell. Any takers?
Hamish Macdonald
himacdon at maytag.uwaterloo.ca
Wed Jan 16 08:35:33 AEST 1991
>>>>> In article <andy.663963786 at xwkg>, andy at xwkg.Icom.Com (Andrew H.
>>>>> Marrinson) writes:
Andrew> I almost sent email asking this same question. Then I
Andrew> realized why. (At least, I think I realized.) The if not
Andrew> command is not exactly the same as an else. True, in the
Andrew> above example it seems it could be replaced with else to good
Andrew> effect, but consider:
Andrew> if (command) {
Andrew> if (command)
Andrew> command
Andrew> }
Andrew> if not
Andrew> command
Andrew> I suspect the if not applies to the second if, not the first.
Andrew> Naming it else would cause people to expect it to apply to the
Andrew> first if, as an else would. Calling it if not makes it clear
Andrew> it is different from else: it applies to the last if command
Andrew> run, and knows nothing about the lexical structure of the
Andrew> script.
Nope. The "if not" applies to the first if (by experimentation).
"rc" must stack the results of the "if"s. I suspect it uses "if not"
because the:
if not
command
is a separate statement.
Hamish.
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