C-Shell weirdness

[jdz at wucec2.UUCP]

In article <2365 at teddy.UUCP> jpn at teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
>Uh, all csh variables (except argv) will always have ONE element unless you
>used the set notation when setting their value.  The way to create a variable
>with zero elements is:
>
>set hosed = ()

Not quite. If you use execution quotes (i.e. `foo`) you can get variables
with zero elements. I have a shell script which returns a list of users doing
slightly anti-social things on our network of student machines; I do this:

set abusers=`anti-social_stuff`; if ($#abusers) flog $abusers ; unset abusers

Which flogs anyti-social abusers, if any. If the shell script returns nothing
(i.e. send nothing to its stdout) then abusers has zero elements. Which is how
one would hope it would behave.
-- 
Jason D. Zions			...!{seismo,cbosgd,ihnp4}!wucs!wucec2!jdz
Washington University Center for Engineering Computing
Box 1045
St. Louis MO 63130  USA		(314) 889-5097
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