Unusual environemtal variables

[Steve Rainbird]

"Ehud Karni" <ehud@unix.mvs.co.il> wrote in message 
news:200812211606.mBLG6LX2014401@beta.mvs.co.il...
> On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:45:14 -0700, Eric Blake <ebb9@byu.net> wrote:
>>
>> According to Steve Rainbird on 12/19/2008 2:22 AM:
>> SR:> When i run a Fuijitsu Cobol program it requires environmental 
>> variables
>> SR:> starting with the @ sign.
>>
>> That is inherently non-portable.  POSIX states that "Other characters may
>> be permitted by an implementation; applications shall tolerate the
>> presence of such names," but does not require applications to be able to
>> create such names.
>>
>> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html#tag_08
>>
>> SR:>
>> SR:> Is there any way around this?
>>
>> You'll have to set it in Windows, prior to starting bash, as there is no
>> way to make bash create variables not starting with something from the
>> portable set [_a-zA-Z].
>
> This behavior (accepting names of only ASCII Alpha and _) is a bash self
> imposed limitation. If you use csh (or tcsh) names with other characters
> are supported too.
>
> So you can use csh's: setenv "@FOO" "value".
> You can also use the env command to bypass bash limitation like this:
>    exec env "@FOO=bar" exec /bin/bash -i
> Note the 2 `exec' if you do not want to spawn more processes.
>
> Ehud.
>
>
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Thanks Eric and Ehud.

-- 
Steve 



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