Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!gatech!ufcsv!codas!novavax!murphy!dcornutt
From: dcornutt@murphy.UUCP (Dave Cornutt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: csh oddity
Message-ID: <826@murphy.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jan 88 13:27:11 GMT
Organization: Gould CSD, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 43
Keywords: csh variables substitution

I have discovered something peculiar about csh variable substitution.  Is
this a bug or am I doing something wrong?  Watch this:

example 1:
% set xyz=qwert
% echo $xyz
qwert
% set xyz=${xyz}_123
% echo $xyz
qwert_123
%

example 2:
% set xy1z=qwert
% echo $xy1z
qwert
% set xy1z=${xy1z}_123
Variable syntax.
% echo $xy1z
qwert
%

Note that the only difference between these two examples is in the variable
name.  After further experimenting, I discovered that the ${foo} form
seems to choke whenever the variable name has a digit in it; variable
names consisting solely of lower-case alphabetics always work.  (I haven't
tried using other characters.)  I tried quoting the string in various ways,
none of which made any difference.  Has anyone ever seen this?  Is it a bug,
or did I just get up too early?

The OS involved here is UTX/32, rev 2.0, which is BSD4.3 based.  However,
I have gotten the same results on Sun 3.2, which is 4.2-based, so I think
it's generic to csh.  Any hints?
---
Dave Cornutt, Gould Computer Systems, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
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