Variable scope 1

[toolkit]

A question for all you shell experts:
I have a simple config file like:

PEOPLE = fred bill ted

And I have a piece of code like:

while read GROUP DELIM MAILS
do
    eval $GROUP='$MAILS'
    echo $FRED
done < file

echo $FRED  # problem is here

The output is:

fred bill ted
<blank line>

What I would like is for '$FRED' to be visible outside the while loop. I have tried using export, set, xargs. I think it is a problem with 'while' running in a subshell. Anyone know of a simple way of getting the variable outside of the loop?

Thanks in advance, Neil

 

[aigles]

This problem is resolved with bash

The solution i can see is :

while read GROUP DELIM MAILS
do
eval $GROUP='$MAILS'
echo $fred
echo "fred='$fred'" > $$
done < file

. $$ ; rm $$
echo $fred #

Jean Pierre.

 

[MikeLacey]

export FRED

while read GROUP DELIM MAILS
do
eval $GROUP='$MAILS'
echo $FRED
done < file

echo $FRED

I'm not sure where your variable $FRED is set though, sorry for being thick Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[toolkit]

Oops, I meant $PEOPLE. Anyways, came up with a solution:

config:
FRED='a b c'
##
BILL='x y z'

script:
LINES=`grep -v '^#' config`
eval $LINES
echo $FRED
echo $BILL

Cheers, Neil