Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!csun!solaria!ecphssrw@roger.csun.edu
From: ecphssrw@roger.csun.edu (Stephen Walton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Arp 1.3 Problems/Features
Message-ID: <797@solaria.csun.edu>
Date: 6 Jul 89 17:53:32 GMT
References: <20107@cup.portal.com>
Sender: ecphssrw@solaria.csun.edu
Reply-To: ecphssrw@roger.csun.edu (Stephen Walton)
Organization: California State Univ., Northridge
Lines: 37
In-reply-to: Gary_D_Walborn@cup.portal.com

In article <20107@cup.portal.com>, Gary_D_Walborn@cup writes:
>
>1>foo=4
>1>echo $foo
>4

Fine so far.

>1>echo $foo+3

Here there is no environment variable named foo+3 so you get no echo.

>1>echo "$foo+3"
>Echo: Unmatched quotes

Hmm...don't know about this one.

>[He would like] "$foo+3" would expand to "4+3".

It does if you precede and follow the + sign with spaces.  Space is the
delimiter in AShell just as in CLI;  neither knows a + sign from an alpha.

>1>echo "^.*$"
>^.$

Again, AShell, like the CLI and the CBM Shell, uses * as an escape, 
so that if you want a * in an argument you have to double it:

1>grep "^.**$" file
1>grep "*"" file

The second example will look for a single " in file.
    You may want to (re-)read both the CBM and ARP docs on the respective
shells.  There is a way to make AShell use \ instead of * as the escape
but I don't know what it is offhand;  it is in the docs.

Steve Walton