ninja@bradley.UUCP (04/02/87)
You can't pass values of shell variables back to parent shells, but you can redirect the input of your shell to a shell script that changes the value of a variable. This is the "." command, and I think it's documented in the SH(1) manual page. It works something like this : $TERM=dumb; export TERM $ . reset /* reset is a shell script that contains TERM=a980 */ $echo $TERM a980 Note that reset could contain any shell commands to change whatever you wanted. I'm pretty sure (but not positive) that this is how getty runs your .profile. A good use for this is to run a script that recovers your terminal after a bad exit from curses. Many uses. And for CSH users the analogous command is "source". Frank McGee ihnp4!bradley!ninja