Re: read-command

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Paul Jarc wrote:

> -pbh- <pbh@pdq.net> writes:
> > An easy test is as follows:
> > echo "thank goodness its friday" | read a b; echo "a=$a, b=$b"
>
> bash forks for each command in a pipeline, so the read works, but it's
> in a child process, so it doesn't affect the original shell.  You can
> work around it like this:
> read a b < <(echo "thank goodness its friday")
> There are other workaraounds in the FAQ.

A trick not mentioned in the FAQ is to enclose the read command and all
the script that uses the read variables in braces:

echo "thank goodness its friday" | { read a b
  echo "a=$a, b=$b"
  ## whatever else
 }

-- 
        Chris F.A. Johnson          bq933@torfree.net
        =================================================================
        c.f.a.johnson@home.com      http://cfaj.freeshell.org
        cfaj@freeshell.org          http://members.home.net/c.f.a.johnson