Re: bash - confusing the user - a headsup/FYI/whatever

[Chet Ramey]

Hannu E K Nevalainen wrote:

> Problem:
> If I understand the "$ help read" text correctly the following variation
> should work, but it doesn't and additionally displays a "totally off" error
> message.
> 
> $ echo "a b c d e f g" | \
> ( IFS=" " while read first remainder ;do echo "got $first" ;done )
> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `do'

Assignment statements may only precede simple commands, not compound
commands like `while'.  The assignment prevents `while' from being
recognized as a reserved word.  To do what you want, move the assignment
to IFS between the `while' and `read'.

Chet
-- 
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Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/