Re: GROUPS

[Franklin, Jason]

Hey, Robert:

Thanks for the input!  Quoting you here with some of my thoughts...

> Using a variable name that's outside what POSIX specifies is hardly
> using a feature that's outside POSIX - if it were then there would be
> no safe non-trivial scripts, since any variable name might be made magic
> by some shell or other (and no, there's nothing special about all upper
> case variable names).

This is a succinct statement of why I am somewhat dissatisfied at the
result here.  My own problems are solved because I know about the
surprise.  I can go away happy for now.

Still, the potential for a clash like this remains with any other POSIX-
compliant script I may run with Bash.  This is true even if I code very
tightly against the standard, without using any non-POSIX extensions.

I think many of the special "magic" variables reserved by Bash are quite
useful to script authors.  I am glad they exist!

What surprised me was that Bash-specific "magic" variables did not lose
their "magic" qualities when Bash was invoked in a POSIX-compliant mode
of execution.  It's something I just need to be aware of, I suppose.

Thanks to all of you for taking time to think about my question!

-- 
Jason Franklin