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From: bobd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Bob Debula)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Ultrix 4.0 bourne shell scripting
Keywords: bourne
Message-ID: <3520@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 7 Aug 90 13:34:28 GMT
References: <6033@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <2071.26bd28b1@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>
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Organization: The Ohio State University (IRCC)
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I just started working with Ultrix 4.0 a few days ago.  This morning,
I tried to port a couple of Bourne shell scripts over and got:

sh: bad substitution

for the line:  grep ${1:-":"} /etc/passwd


I then tried just "-" in the above construct
in place of ":-" and everything worked fine.  I am porting stuff
from the HP-UX environment and thought that the syntax rules
for the Bourne shell were more or less universal.  Is this an
Ultrix peculiarity (and why did they decide not to support
the ":" form) ? 

==========================================================================
Bob DeBula                    | Internet:   bobd@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu
The Ohio State University     | Disclaimer: These are my views, not the U's
Davros sez:   When my Daleks compute they use X-TER-MI-NALS!