Re: Simple shell scripting question from a newbie.
On 04-Feb-04, 00:28 (CST), Lex Hider <alexeijh@pacific.net.au> wrote:
> So please be nice if this is a really dumb question.
It's not a dumb question, but it might be better asked on debian-users.
> Is a piece of code like the following...
>
> while [ x"$1" != x ]; do
> ...
> done
>
> the same as using the -z flag for test.
Yes.
> It just looks like a weird way of doing things that occur frequently.
The -z test is a relatively new addition (well, considering that the
original bourne shell is ~25 years old :-)), so out of habit or concern
for portability (the Sun Solaris /bin/sh doesn't support -z) people
still use the [ x"$1" != x] form.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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