Re: Syntax Question...

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 12:45:58AM -0700, Linda Walsh wrote:
> #!/bin/bash -exu

> alias sub=function
> alias unless='if !'

Aliases don't even *work* in scripts.

> typeset -xr sub unless
> 
> declare -a SAVE_ARGS=( "$@" )
> typeset -xr snapdir='snapdir'
> 
> # in shell: white is black and black is white:
> export b_false=1
> export b_true=0
> export Debug=$b_false  Verbose=$b_true  Silent=$b_false
> export Quiet=$b_false  Force=""  loglevel=7

Whatever your purpose is here, you're doing things in a very unclear
way.

verbose=0  # false
if ((verbose)); then
  echo "blah blah blah"
fi

verbose=1  # true
if ((verbose)); then
  echo "this one gets written"
fi

Also, don't export variables without a reason.  Internal variables like
"b_false" do not need to appear in the environment of child processes.

> read progdir prog path export_blob <<<$(env_init "$progdir" "$prog" "$this")

If you are going to use <<< then you *must* quote the word which follows
it:

read a <<< "$b"

However, if your input source is a command rather than a variable
expansion, then you should probably be using < <() instead:

read progdir prog path export_blob < <(env_init "$progdir" "$prog" "$this")

> if [[ $#<1 ]]; then 
>       errx 50 "Need mount_path of fs to create snap_rdiff from"
> fi

I'd strongly suggest using ((...)) for arithmetic comparisons.

if (($#<1)); then
  errx ...
fi

The [[ ... < ... ]] command does a *string* comparison.  When comparing
to the string "1" it will usually work out as you expect, but consider
this:

a=42
if [[ $a < 7 ]]; then
  echo "$a is less than 7?"
fi

I didn't read the rest.

As far as the original part of this thread is concerned: if you want a
reference to an array, use ksh93.  Bash doesn't have them.  In bash you
must use eval, with all its headaches, as shown in other messages of
this thread.