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To: rc@archone.tamu.edu
Subject: matching "nothing" seems to be broken
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1991 19:52:59 -0500
From: "David J. Fiander" <david@golem.uucp>


I'm having a slight problem.  I want to be able to check to see
if a variable is either not set, or set to the empty string, so
I write

	if (~ $foo () '') echo all clear

The problem is that the list of words to compare $foo to is not
being evaluated properly (or at least I don't think so).  The
() is being removed for some reason, so 'rc -x' reports the
test "~ $foo ''".

However, the test "~ $foo ()" works; it is only parsed wrong
when the list of words to compare against is longer than one.

Has anybody else seen this?