From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: from munnari.oz.au ([128.250.1.21]) by archone.tamu.edu with SMTP id <22531>; Sat, 10 Aug 1991 07:55:30 -0500
Received: from basser.cs.su.oz by munnari.oz.au with SunIII (5.64+1.3.1+0.50)
	id AA19313; Sat, 10 Aug 1991 22:55:11 +1000 (from dhog@basser.cs.su.OZ.AU)
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1991 07:47:24 -0500
From: Solid Hogan <dhog@cs.su.oz.au>
To: The Rc Mailing List <rc%archone.tamu.edu@munnari.oz.au>
Subject: bugs with variable assignments
Message-Id: <9108102247.12224.rc.bader@cs.su.oz.au>
X-Face: 'B4A5xr.&(*ne}8,IvVj2^PS"?tx:^[d%W3qSI-pYcRS4#L]H1avGI62"ufA.",n<fvsFZi
 }0*JvX&`K?L5a\,D+`B9q@:lSV(}($;PKj;dae2=fyYD={/mDT3X^!h+m7QMfLs.VrPI79b~PqrrDT
 ,qcg/W.@c]7tu&{b@aZu#Zok?aKhAr;[R+[T@(2b=&[NCLzVn~H!C3(;6BAe'E{w6Y$_]qUAH9dA4]
 X%

In the process of changing to 1.1gamma, we've found some surprises.
It's probably at least a bit fair to call some of them bugs.

One of the things that makes rc much better than other shells
is the fact that it has true local variables: if you want a
variable to be declared for a local scope, you just

	var=() {
		any code
		you like
	}

and the variable will be saved and restored around the local use.
This is great.

Now, it was a little surprising that this actually failed if there
were nothing but an assignment in the block:

	frag = /a/very/long/pathname/fragment {
		global = ($frag/sub1 $frag/sub2 $frag/third/sub)
	}

never worked (it always left frag set, instead of making the
assignment local).  But in earlier rc's, you could write:

	frag = /a/very/long/pathname/fragment {
		global = ($frag/sub1 $frag/sub2 $frag/third/sub) ;
	}

and it would work.  We're not quite sure where it changed, but it
definitely worked in 1.0.  In 1.1gamma, this no longer works; to get
it to be a local assignment now takes something like:

	frag = /a/very/long/pathname/fragment {
		global = ($frag/sub1 $frag/sub2 $frag/third/sub) true
	}

which is pretty ugly.