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From: avr@hou2d.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Recovery scripts: use $@
Message-ID: <1444@hou2d.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jun-87 22:32:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou2d.1444
Posted: Tue Jun 23 22:32:23 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jun-87 02:06:32 EDT
References: <913@rtech.UUCP> <7062@mimsy.UUCP> <767@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1500@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 19
Keywords: #!, csh, ksh
Summary: use $@ rather than $*

In article <1500@ho95e.ATT.COM>, wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart) writes:
> I generally write all my scripts in Bourne Shell, because I know they'll work
> (relatively) portably.  When it's important to use ksh, I use the following:
> 	if [ "$RANDOM" = "$RANDOM" ] 
> 	then ## recovery script to feed itself to ksh
> 		ksh -c "$0 $*"
> 		exit "$?"
> 	fi
> 
> The simpler approach of checking $SHELL doesn't work; SHELL is exported,
> and some programs will drop into /bin/sh by default.  ksh updates $RANDOM each
> time it uses the value, so "$RANDOM" = "$RANDOM" will never be true in ksh,
> and will (presumably) always be true in other shells.
> 
> Writing a good recovery script is hard; if the arguments to the program
> contain white space or metacharacters, the $* will trash them.

Use $@ instead of $*.
			Adam Reed (hou2d!avr)