Help with functions

["Cosgray, Nathan" <ncosgray@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to run a complex group of processes that at one time were all
automated via make, which called functions in a zsh shell script, which in
turn moved files around and ran sas scripts.  All of this was written years
ago by the predecessor to the predecessor to my predecessor.  To my
knowledge the last time they were used sucessfully was towards the end of
1998.

Here is the problem that seems to be holding me back.  To be as precise as
possible, the makefile calls functions within a zsh script in the following
manner:

  <file1>:
  	./run_masterfile_step get_file <param1> <param2>
 
  <file2>:
  	./run_masterfile_step get_file <param3> <param4>

   <file3>:
  	./run_masterfile_step recalcprep

Etc.  So, from my makefile, many different zsh functions are called to
operate on many different files, according to the dependencies defined in
the makefile and the parameters passed to the various functions in
run_masterfile_step.

The zsh script run_masterfile_step contains about 25 functions defined like
so:

  #!/usr/local/bin/zsh

  ...

  get_file ()
  {
    ...
  }

  recalcprep ()
  {
    ...
  }

Now, I have never delved too deeply into shell scripting, but from what I
can gather the idea behind this is that make calls the functions defined in
run_masterfile_step.  In turn, the functions will perform various tasks
based on the parameters they receive.  In addition, these functions often
call each other, in order to do things such as display the current
date/time, or send an email message -- which is, I assume, partly why they
must all be contained within a single file.

The problem is, none of this is working.  make fails due to the fact that
none of the functions provided by run_masterfile_step actually do anything.
To experiment from the command line, I can type './run_masterfile_step
<somefunction>' and nothing will happen (obviously I have closely examined
the functions and I'm including valid parameters, referring to files that
exist, etc.).  I get no error messges, no output (all of the functions
within the zsh script use echo's extensively to give feedback), and I notice
no discernable processing time.  I can easily tell what is supposed to
happen from the script code but none of it is in fact happening.  I can do a
'source run_masterfile_step' and then type '<somefunction>' and it will work
properly, however.  So I'm thinking there must be a problem with the way in
which these functions are called.  Unfortunately, I can't find any
documentation that describes the syntax and rules for this.  Does this
problem have anything to do with the fact that these functions are
indirectly called from make vs. from within zsh?  Should these functions be
split up into separate shell scripts?

We currently have zsh 3.0.2 installed on SunOS 5.5 and 5.6 (varies by
machine).  I also compiled zsh 2.5.03 but it did not work as expected with
these scripts, either.  I have no way of knowing what version of zsh
orginally ran these scripts years ago.  I do know that they were used
sucessfully for quite some time -- at least 3 years ending in November of
1998.  I believe there have been some hardware and software upgrades since
then but I'm not sure what could cause these scripts to break in such a
fundamental way.

I'm sure that I can rewrite or reorganize these scripts if I need to.  But
I'd just like to make sure there is nothing I can do to easily fix this.
I'm also extremely confused about why this would no longer be working the
way it was written.  There must be something important I'm missing and I'd
like to understand what that is.

So.  Any ideas or thoughts?  Corrections of syntax?  Version conflicts?  Do
you need more information, like the scripts themselves?  Or at the least can
you tell me where to go for zsh scripting documentation more detailed and
complete than the man pages or that kept on http://www.zsh.org?

Your help is very much appreciated.

Thanks

Nathan A. Cosgray, Database Administrator
IUPUI Dept. of Medical Genetics