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Subject: Piping to the 'read' command
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 11:03:49 +0800
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Can anyone explain what is happening here (using pdksh as my shell) when
I try to set an environment variable using 'read':

This works:
$ read VAR1
Test1
$ echo "VAR1 is $VAR1"
VAR1 is Test1

This doesn't work:
$ echo Test2 | read VAR2
$ echo "VAR2 is $VAR2"
VAR2 is

This works within the 'while' loop only:
$ echo Test3 | while read VAR3
> do
> echo "VAR3 is $VAR3"
> done
VAR3 is Test3
$ echo "VAR3 is $VAR3"
VAR3 is


Regards

Ian Taylor

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