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
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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>
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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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.

-- 
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