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From: Andrew DeFaria <Andrew AT DeFaria DOT com>
Subject: Re: About ENV?
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 08:22:31 -0700
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John Vincent wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Not quite right there ... You can preceed a command with an 
> assignment, and the assigned variable is then put into the environment 
> of the command that is run. Thus the command
> "echo" is run with an environment variable AAAA with the value aaaa. 
> However, this does not change the AAAA shell variable (which is 
> currently empty) so the echo prints a blank (it's empty argument) and 
> ignores the AAAA in it's environment.
>
> This syntax is useful for setting environment variables for one 
> command invocation only. They are not saved.
>
> I hope this fully explains what is going on.

It doesn't. If "This syntax is useful for setting environment variables 
for one command invocation only" then the echo command should have 
echoed "aaa". Otherwise the syntax is not useful for setting environment 
variables for one command invocation. Perhaps what is meant is that this 
syntax is useful for overriding environment variables for one command 
invocation? However this leaves a glaring inconsistancy prone to error 
if the variable was not set already then no override takes place.




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