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From: "Andrej Borsenkow" <Andrej.Borsenkow@mow.siemens.ru>
To: "Allen Belk" <allen.belk@usm.edu>, <zsh-workers@sunsite.auc.dk>
Subject: RE: returning a pathname from a function
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 09:47:44 +0400
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> prep_directories()
> {
>    output_directory="/var/adm/backup/${1}_${2}"
>    backup_log="${output_directory}/backup.log"
>    backup_lis="${output_directory}/backup.lis"
>    return $backup_log,$backup_lis
> }
>
> prep_directories 20000330 WEEKLY
>
>
> Executing this script results in the following error.
>
>     prep_directories: bad math expression: unbalanced stack [75]
>


You cannot return string. return expects arithmetic expression as
status. I agree, that message is a bit weird ... what exact vesion do
you have?

What you try to do? Either output result using echo or print builtin:

	print $backup_log,$backup_lis

in this case you can do something like

	DIRS=$(prep_directories 20000330 WEEKLY)

or you can set parameter explicitly in function:

	DIRS=$backup_log,$backup_lis

-andrej