Please educate me

[David Laight]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 04:13:03AM +0200, Sylvain Petreolle wrote:
> > noticed that 
> > 
> > for ac_dir in /sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH
> > 
> > was splitting as 
> > 1. /sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
> > 2. /bin
> > 3. /usr/bin
> > etc.
> 
> it's a normal behaviour, because for uses space as a
> separator, not ':' ??
> 
> > 
> > Now, I know I can force it to work by changing the
> > for loop to 
> > for ac_dir in /sbin /usr/sbin $PATH

If you have:
	more_path="/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH"
you can do:
	save_ifs="$IFS"
	IFS=" :"
	for ac_dir in $more_path
	do
		IFS="$save_ifs"
		...
	done

So that the shell treats ':' as a separator when
parsing the output of the substitution.


	David

-- 
David Laight: david at l8s.co.uk