Re: parameters disappear - newbie needs help

From: Anne Crowther <anne.crowther_at_capgemini.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:14:58 +0100
Message-ID: <7tflh5$6cu$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>

> What am I doing wrong? I don't have a clue.

Nothing! What you have seen is just normal Unix behaviour :-)

When you execute a command - like running a shell script, it runs in it's own environment. So, when you did:

> PARAMETER=CONTENTS
> export PARAMETER
> echo PARAMETER $PARAMETER
>

That made PARAMETER visible to your shell script. As soon as that script terminates, the value of PARAMETER disappears. (As you noticed!)

BTW dunno if this was a typo, but you need to do "echo $PARAMETER" to get the shell to show the value.

> If I set the parameter from the command line it is visible as long as
> I stay in the same terminal window.
>

When you create a new terminal window, that is a separate process from your main window. So... any assignments you create disappear when you exit that window.

Anne Crowther
-- Received on Wed Oct 06 1999 - 09:14:58 CDT