From:	"John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: BASH startup
Date:	Thu, 09 Jan 1997 17:36:09 -0800
Organization:	Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt
Lines:	26
Message-ID:	<32D59D09.2BF4@cs.com>
References:	<5b0thq$g5e$1 AT mark DOT ucdavis DOT edu> <5b1076$nb0$1 AT mark DOT ucdavis DOT edu> <32D47DAB DOT 38B1 AT cs DOT com> <01bbfe2a$d10ea4e0$0f02000a AT weiqigao>
Reply-To:	fighteer AT cs DOT com
NNTP-Posting-Host:	ppp208.cs.com
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

Weiqi Gao wrote:
> 
> Yes.  The current shell gets the variable whether you export or not.
> Subshells gets the variable only after you export it.  Is that how it works
> in ksh?

In ksh, any variables that are not exported only exist in the context of
the current shell, and are not retained by the parent when that shell
exits.  So, if you write a script, but don't export your variables, they
will only exist in the context of that script.

I don't know if variables are passed to spawned shell processes, because
I never tested it.  However, whenever I wrote a ksh shell script I was
always very careful to distinguish between "local" (non-exported) and
"global" (exported) environment variables.  There was one advantage: 
cleaning up afterwards was much easier.  :)

You'll have to forgive me if this isn't clear, but it's been a while
since I used ksh.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I |        fighteer AT cs DOT com          |
| Descent 2: The Infinite Abyss - The greatest Internet game of all |
| time just got better!  This time, you're going all the way down...|
---------------------------------------------------------------------

- Raw text -