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From: jty@intrin.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Shell & IFS
Message-ID: <504@intrin.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Mar-87 05:16:27 EST
Article-I.D.: intrin.504
Posted: Tue Mar  3 05:16:27 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Mar-87 00:24:25 EST
References: <4560@brl-adm.ARPA> <140@tdi2.UUCP>
Reply-To: jty@intrin.UUCP (Jyrki Yli-Nokari)
Organization: Intrinsic Oy, Tampere, FINLAND
Lines: 35

In article <140@tdi2.UUCP> brandon@tdi2.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>IFS=':
>' # newline and colon
>while read name pass uid gid comment home shell; do
>	# do something with them
>done < /etc/passwd
>
>This is the ONLY way I've seen it used; frankly, I use "awk" if I want to
>process a file in this way anyway, so I see no real use for IFS.

Nope!

IFS comes in handy if you want to parse command output or, say, PATH
----------
: 'this is a functional equivalent to SV sh type command'
IFS=":$IFS"
for CMD
do
	for DIR in $PATH
	do
		if test -x $DIR/$CMD
		then
			echo $DIR/$CMD 
		fi
	done
done
-----------
IFS=":$IFS"
set `date`
echo It\'s $4.$5
-- 
Jyrki Yli-Nokari, Intrinsic Oy, SF-33100 Tampere, FINLAND

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