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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: Re: /bin/true
Message-ID: <736@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 9-May-86 18:25:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.736
Posted: Fri May  9 18:25:51 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 25-May-86 06:29:24 EDT
References: <481@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> <518@looking.UUCP> <1110@whuxl.UUCP> <154@toram.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL)
Lines: 20

In article <154@toram.UUCP> chris@toram.UUCP (Chris Robertson) writes:
>In shell scripts, I find setting a variable to "true" or "false" and then
>simply saying "if $variable" can often make the code more readable than an
>explicit "test" or using a case statement.

Consider the following approach, which has lower overhead:

	flag=

	...

	if [ stuff-that-needs-to-set-flag ]	# for example
	then	flag=y
	fi

	...

	if [ "$flag" ]
	then	# flag was set
	fi