Shell & IFS

[brandon at tdi2.UUCP]

Expires:

Quoted from <4560 at brl-adm.ARPA> ["Make is Buggy"], by rbj at icst-cmr.arpa (Root Boy Jim)...
+---------------
|    ]>Furthermore, it is a botch to *import* SHELL from the environment;
|    ]>this causes Makefiles to work differently for people with different
|    ]>login shells!  "make" should NOT import SHELL.
+---------------

AMEN!  Plexus ships a buggy csh with System V; I use it.  Mix it with make
and KABOOM!  I'm not happy with make.

+---------------
|    ]And it *certainly* should not attempt to import things like IFS!
| 
| Well, John Mashey once suggested asking `why' before flaming, and since
| someone brought it up, *** why does IFS even exist *** ?
+---------------

It's a kludgy way to do things that can be done in other ways (albeit more
slowly).  Example:

IFS=':
' # newline and colon
while read name pass uid gid comment home shell; do
	# do something with them
done < /etc/passwd

This is the ONLY way I've seen it used; frankly, I use "awk" if I want to
process a file in this way anyway, so I see no real use for IFS.

++Brandon
-- 
``for is he not of the Children of Luthien?  Never shall that line fail, though
the years may lengthen beyond count.''  --J. R. R. Tolkien

Brandon S. Allbery	           UUCP: cbatt!cwruecmp!ncoast!tdi2!brandon
Tridelta Industries, Inc.         CSNET: ncoast!allbery at Case
7350 Corporate Blvd.	       INTERNET: ncoast!allbery%Case.CSNET at relay.CS.NET
Mentor, Ohio 44060		  PHONE: +1 216 255 1080 (home) +1 216 974 9210