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From: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: C-Shell weirdness (count of words in a variable)
Message-ID: <434@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 04:48:28 EST
Article-I.D.: ncr-sd.434
Posted: Thu Mar 27 04:48:28 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Apr-86 23:59:24 EST
References: <676@nbires.UUCP> <2021@hao.UUCP> <678@nbires.UUCP> <2024@hao.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 19

In article <2024@hao.UUCP> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes:
>> > set hosed
>> > echo $#hosed
>> > THEN you will get 0.
>> Sorry, I tried the example that is supposed to yield zero and I got one
>> instead.
>> The answer is that you can't have a variable with 0 words at all.
>> This fact I find counter-intuitive and undocumented
>    I stand corrected. It seems that $#var is either an error or a positive
>integer. Counterintuitive is debatable, however; .....

No, there is a way to get a C shell variable with zero words:
  set hosed = ()
Counterintuitive is relative -- this was obvous to me; but then, I wasn't
trying to do it, it was an accidential side-effect of doing:
  set something = (`some command`)
  if $#something ......
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo    Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA