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Subject: Re: Some small bash issues
From: Tim Van Holder <tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be>
To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
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Date: 14 Feb 2002 08:40:40 +0100
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On Wed, 2002-02-13 at 22:07, Mark E. wrote:
> >  - readline not quite OK (Del, Ctl-Left, Ctl-Right, ... don't work)
> 
> set TERM=djgpp
> should do it.

Ah OK - thanks.

> >  - some issues with envvars:
> > 
> >       foo=bar echo $foo
> > 
> >    is supposed to print "bar", but doesn't.
> 
> I seem to remember answering this once before. The answer is that this is the 
> way Bash works:
> 
> Simple Command Expansion
> ------------------------
> 
>    When a simple command is executed, the shell performs the following
> expansions, assignments, and redirections, from left to right.
> 
>   1. The words that the parser has marked as variable assignments (those
>      preceding the command name) and redirections are saved for later
>      processing.
> 
> 
> In other words, "foo=bar" isn't peformed until after the command is executed.

Right.
Which explains why it works for

   foo=bar ./shell-script

because everything in the script is simply a 'new command'.

So the problem is that a Perl script isn't run that way on DJGPP.
On Unices,

  foo=bar ./perl-script

works fine (presumably, bash tries to process it as a shell script, sees
the #!, expands the envvar, and hands the script off to the system).
On DJGPP, bash runs the script without substituting the variable.

I'll see if the lack of ';' is deliberate (i.e. maybe "foo=bar;
./script" isn't portable); if not, I'll submit a patch to autoconf &
automake to use one.