Mail Archives: cygwin/2002/10/02/15:05:45
Brian,
No, it's not odd. It's correct.
This is a generic thing about how environment variables work and is in no
way specific to the CLASSPATH variable (or any other PATH or pre-defined or
built-in variable) nor is this specific or peculiar to Cygwin.
When you execute a shell script such as the one you showed, a sub-process
is created to run that script. Environment variables are inherited by all
new child sub-processes. However, variables defined or changed in a
sub-process are never passed back to the parent process that created the
sub-process.
The usual way to accomplish the sort of variable-setting you (appear to)
want is to use the "source" command (or it's synonym, "."). This shell
built-in causes the commands in the named script to be executed by the same
shell that executed the "." or "source" command. Arguments are not passed
in this case. You need to be a little careful with that variety of script.
For example, invoking the "exit" command will cause your interactive shell
to terminate.
Good luck.
Randall Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA
At 11:56 2002-10-02, Brian Rowe wrote:
>Hello,
>If I export CLASSPATH=blah on the command line it
>works fine. If I write a shell program that sets the
>CLASSPATH it won't set it! When I echo the value its
>right from the script, but when its done the CLASSPATH
>is not set. Any ideas on why this wouldn't work?
>
>#!/bin/sh
>export CLASSPATH="C:\jdk\lib\tools.jar"
>
>Run that, then check echo $CLASSPATH at the command
>line and CLASSPATH is the same. Odd?
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