On Sat, May 05, 2001 at 04:35:02PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: > > > > Some bourne shells don't like testing variables that don't exist yet. > > That's precisely what we're trying to test. where you run in to trouble really is when you don't quote the variable, for example: if [ $FOO = bar ] ; then echo true fi if $FOO is unset you get a shell error about unary operator. because the above translates to: if [ = bar ] ; then echo true fi which is not valid. if you quite the variable you get: if [ "" = bar ] ; then echo true fi the quotes of course are removed, but they show here that an actual null is being tested for equality with `bar'. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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