variable assignment in string returning function

[Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan]

Hi,

I found the behaviour of the function below is a little bit odd. Appreciate
if someone can share his/her knowledge regarding the behaviour.

The output of the script will be:

sharuzzaman@debian:~$ ./case1.sh
Nice behaviour,

Somehow, the backtick for foo() execute the function, echoing the correct
output, but fails to set the variable $gang to the correct value. Because of
that, the function bar() did not echoing anything because the variable $gang
is null.

I would expect that $gang is set with the correct value and function bar()
will work after that.

Thanks.


System information:

OS: Debian Squeeze
Hardware: Intel x86 Pentium 4
Bash: 4.1.0(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)



#startscript----------
#!/bin/bash

# test case for variable assignment in string returning function
# case 1: function with echo

name="optimus"

foo () {
if [ "$name" = "optimus" ]
then
        gang="good"
        echo "Nice behaviour"
else
        gang="bad"
        echo "Naughty behaviour"
fi
}

bar () {
case "$gang" in

        good)
                echo "autobot"
        ;;

        bad)
                echo "decepticon"
        ;;
esac
}

behaviour=`foo`
group=`bar`

echo $behaviour,$group
#endscript------------------------

-- 
Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan