Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site spuxll.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!akgua!whuxle!spuxll!npl
From: npl@spuxll.UUCP (Nick Landsberg)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Why parse lines with colons
Message-ID: <526@spuxll.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jul-84 00:08:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: spuxll.526
Posted: Tue Jul 17 00:08:25 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Jul-84 03:40:15 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, South Plainfield NJ
Lines: 17

One of the reasons /bin/sh (bsh to those who like csh)
parses lines with ":" in the beginning is because of
constructs like the following:

: ${FOO:-default}

This effectively sets $FOO to a default value if not previously
set.  The longhand way would be:

if [ "${FOO}" = "" ]
then
	FOO=default
fi


		From the hairy eyeball of ---
		Nick Landsberg ( ....!spuxll!npl)