Re: typesetting parameters

[lists <lists@kalama.no-ip.org>]

What a friendly and helpful list this is.  Thanks Vincent and Bart!


On Jun 14, 2004, at 1:24 PM, Vincent Stemen wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 13, 2004 at 09:58:57PM -0700, Bart Schaefer wrote:
>> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004, lists wrote:
>>
>>> 	I'm having difficulty understanding why one would define a parameter
>>> with typeset before using it.
>>
>> One probably wouldn't, when interactively typing commands, unless one
>> wanted to use the special attributes such as padding, alignment, other
>> integer bases, or floating-point precision.
>>
>> The primary time/place and reason to use typeset is when defining 
>> shell
>> functions, to create variables that are local to the function scope. 
>> When
>> you use "local" that's really an alias for typeset.
>
> Not only that, even outside of functions, some expressions such as
>
>     variable+=$value
>
> will not always behave as intended if the variable is not typeset.  If
> it is typeset as an array for example, you can depend on it appending
> "$value" to the list.  Otherwise it might try to add it as an integer
> or append it as a string, depending on it's value.
>
> Regards,
> Vincent
>
> -- 
> Vincent Stemen
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