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From: ned@pebbles.cad.mcc.com (CME Ned Nowotny)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Forcing /bin/sh in a script under V/386 3.2 Korn shell
Message-ID: <1795@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 89 15:52:24 GMT
References: <14445@bfmny0.UUCP> <1989Jul12.191342.1048@cs.dal.ca> <1792@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> <1152@vsi.COM>
Sender: news@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM
Reply-To: ned%cad@MCC.COM (CME Ned Nowotny)
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Organization: MCC CAD Program, Austin, TX
Lines: 22

In article <1152@vsi.COM> friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>In article <1792@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>, ned@pebbles.cad.mcc.com (CME Ned Nowotny) writes:
=>> In fact, one of the most useful things you could do
=>> with ":" was to comment your shell script since ":" does nothing
=>> with the arguments (a.k.a.  comment string) that you may provide
=>> it.
=>
=>While this is true, it can be misleading.  In particular, the line
=>
=>	cat file file2 > file3
=>
=>isn't commented out by prefixing it with a colon.  Cat doesn't run,
=>but redirection *will* take place and file3 will be truncated.

True.  This is probably one of the reasons an actual comment character (#)
was eventually added to the Bourne shell.


Ned Nowotny, MCC CAD Program, Box 200195, Austin, TX  78720  Ph: (512) 338-3715
ARPA: ned@mcc.com                   UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!ned
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