Re: safe way to set a path

[Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org>]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 07:46:21AM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> wrote:
> 
> > A better approach would be to set IFS to : and loop over the PATH entries
> > and see if one matches with the directory you want to add.
> 
> The original message said that this is for a script.  But why would you
> bother checking for this if it's just going to be used while the script
> is running? It doesn't hurt to have the same directory in the PATH twice.

This is just for a wrapper script which will be in /usr/bin, to change
PATH and a add a couple of env.vars and run something in /usr/lib.

Anyway, what I was looking for was Adam Heath's suggestion: 
PATH="${PATH:+$PATH:}..."

Thanks to Steve Kowalik for digging it up and sending it to me.


Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>