guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) (10/24/83)
The following shell script doesn't work with the 4.2 BSD Bourne shell (sh): BIN=/bin : ${ECHO="$BIN/echo"} $ECHO $ECHO It replies with sh: /bin/echo: not found. The direct reason is that the variable ECHO has all the high order bits set (this was verified by exporting it and checking the environment from a C program). Probably the shell forgets to remove these bits (that it internally uses to remember quoted characters). Note that the following three alternatives for the second line all work: : ${ECHO="/bin/echo"} : ${ECHO=$BIN/echo} ECHO="$BIN/echo" The V7 shell on our PDP doesn't have the error. -- Guido van Rossum, {philabs,decvax}!mcvax!guido Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science, (CWI, formerly MC), Amsterdam