Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!npd.novell.com!news
From: bcardoza@npd.Novell.COM (Bryan Cardoza)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: puzzled
Message-ID: <1990Nov28.170905.29475@npd.Novell.COM>
Date: 28 Nov 90 17:09:05 GMT
References: <1990Nov27.002845.3387@informix.com>
Reply-To: bryan_cardoza@npd.novell.com (Bryan Cardoza)
Followup-To: comp.unix.shell
Distribution: usa
Organization: Novell NPD, Provo, Utah
Lines: 38

In article <1990Nov27.002845.3387@informix.com> housed@infmx.informix.com (Darryl House) writes:
>The following is a Bourne shell script that illustrates
>what I am trying to do: set a shell variable that
>contains the contents of another one that is referred
>to by concatenating two others. Sufficiently confusing?

Pointer variables in Bourne shell?  You mean like this?

	#! /bin/sh

	PREFIXES="alpha gamma"
	SUFFIXES="beta delta"

	alphabeta=1
	alphadelta=2
	gammabeta=3
	gammadelta=4

	for prefix in ${PREFIXES}
	do
		for suffix in ${SUFFIXES}
		do
			# Notice that the combination of "eval" and escaping
			# the first "$" does the magic you want.
			eval magic=\${${prefix}${suffix}}
			echo ${magic}
		done
	done

Is this what you mean?  (I've found this really usefull in calling
shell procedures with different global shell variable names as
arguments.)

--
Bryan Cardoza                             <Bryan_Cardoza@NPD.Novell.COM>
Software Engineer
Novell, Inc.                                   Telephone: (801) 429-3149
Provo, UT                                            Fax: (801) 429-3500