eirik@lurch.Stanford.EDU (Eirik Fuller) (02/09/89)
I wrote the enclosed script fragment for a semi-serious purpose, then decided it was amusing enough to post. Rather than ruining your fun by explaining it, I thought I'd leave that up to you. Figuring it out could be educational. Please don't post responses telling what it's for; this isn't a survey of how many Unix experts know how to post news articles. If you insist on answering this question, do so by email; I'll post an anonymous summary of the most amusing wrong answers. I already know what I believe to be the right answer. This fragment serves its intended purpose on a UTek workstation and on a Sun 4 running SunOS; the only other system I tried it on, an Ultrix machine, didn't like it. There are doubtless other systems it doesn't work on, and perhaps other systems it does work on. I doubt I'll port it anywhere it doesn't already work. My sincere apologies in advance if this is old hat; it's new to me. Here's the fragment: if (0) then :; fi 2>/dev/null; endif() { :; } ; setenv() { eval "$1='$2'"; export $1; } endif