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	sedalia.sinet.slb.com
Subject: Re: A patch to add builtin read (small bug)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 21 Sep 1993 23:11:29 +0200."
Reply-To: vons@cesar.crbca1.sinet.slb.com
Date:	Thu, 23 Sep 1993 03:30:58 -0400


 |                 The diffs assume you've been keeping up with the bug
 |fix patches posted here.  (If anyone wants a complete set of diffs
 |against a virgin copy of 1.4 let me know and I'll mail it to you.)

The patch dropped in nicely in my virgin 1.4, no problems.

I was just wondering about the following case:

	; x=(foo bar)
	; read x < /dev/null
	; echo $status
	1
	; whatis x
	x=(foo bar)

This suggests that something has been read before encountering EOF,
which is obviously not the case, so I assume the read should set x to ''.

  |For Chris, if you don't care about setting a different ifs, you can
  |split the line without a fork by using eval:
  |	read x;eval 'x=('$x')'

This doesn't work:

	; read x;eval 'x=('$x')'
	a line with a # in the middle
	line 1: syntax error near eof
	;

	; read x;eval 'x=('$x')'
	a line with a = in the middle
	line 1: syntax error near '='
	;

The 'trick' with the echo works however, fork()-ing every time:

	; read x; x= `{echo $x}
	a line with a # in the middle
	; whatis x
	x=(a line with a '#' in the middle)
	;

If a read function is added, why not make it a bit more practical by using
$ifs? If makes it more useful, and the code above a bit more elegant.
I wouldn't mind adding this myself, but I'm not too familiar with the
rc internals.

	Gert-Jan

---------------------------------------------------
J.G. Vons   E-Mail: vons@cesar.crbca1.sinet.slb.com