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Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 09:39:25 -0600 (CST)
From: Christopher Abbey <cabbey AT bresnanlink DOT net>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: RE: bash: setenv: command not found
In-Reply-To: <1010208124727.AA47875.SM@nike.INS.CWRU.Edu>
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Today, Chet Ramey wrote:
> > <soapbox>
> > yes, this is a stupid naming convention, and it's one
> > of the things I hate the most about shells... every one
> > has a different version, and different syntax. There
> > needs to be ONE standard, and I'm sorry to say BASH's
> > answer isn't an answer; here csh got it right.
> > </soapbox>
> 
> Why do you say that csh is right and bash is wrong?

call me crazy but I like orthogonality, and logically named
commands.

setenv/unsetenv is just more intuitively obvious than export/unset
imho. I also appreciate the lack of an = in the assignments, to me
at least the construct "export foo=bar" evaluates to "export true"
which is illogical. (read that as 'export the result of this
assignment'.) This allows a clean distinction between "foo=bar yada"
and "setenv foo bar; yada" clearly in the first case foo is only
assigned 'locally' whereas in the second its being put into the
environment. You only need one "assignment opperator", either = (do
it locally) or setenv (globaly) the combination of the two is
just confusing and redundant.

It's a nit, I know, but it annoys me daily as I have to deal with
a half dozen different shells in the course of doing my job. I've
chosen to "standardize" on bash as much as possible, and just regret
that this one aspect of the shell is so irritating. I've considered
writing a shell function to emulate a "sane" environment handler,
but haven't yet for fear of what a reliance on that would do to my
abilty to quickly hop into a foreign environment and fix something
(which I'm called upon to do a LOT of at work).

p.s. is it just me, or are others not seeing 100% of the traffic
on the list? If you hadn't cc'd me I'd never have seen your reply,
or my orignal post for that matter.

-- 
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  unexpected new ally - http://ibm.com/linux


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