Re: info: can we add a way to get the default path?

[Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk>]

> Karl Berry <karl@cs.umb.edu> writes:
> 
> > I suggest we adopt your solution #2 in this form: make a leading or
> > trailing or doubled colon expand into the default path.  That's what I
> > did for tex/web2c/kpathsea many years ago and I haven't had any
> > complaints about it.
> 
> Sounds OK, though it does mean you have to be careful about variables
> that expand to "".  For example, if you say INFOPATH=${FOO}:/usr/info,
> and if $FOO is for some reason unbound, then you get the default path
> expanded there rather than no path.  I suppose if you haven't had and
> complaints, it's probably not a common failure mode, but if you
> requred some special token rather than treating colons specially, this
> couldn't happen.

No: any solution of this nature would give the same problem.  If you
really need care about this possibility in a given situation, then do
something like:

if -n "$FOO"; then INFOPATH=$FOO:/usr/info; fi

   Julian

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  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
        Debian GNU/Linux Developer,  see http://www.debian.org/~jdg