On Sun, Jun 13, 2004 at 09:58:57PM -0700, Bart Schaefer wrote:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004, lists wrote:
I'm having difficulty understanding why one would define a parameter
with typeset before using it.
One probably wouldn't, when interactively typing commands, unless one
wanted to use the special attributes such as padding, alignment, other
integer bases, or floating-point precision.
The primary time/place and reason to use typeset is when defining
shell
functions, to create variables that are local to the function scope.
When
you use "local" that's really an alias for typeset.
Not only that, even outside of functions, some expressions such as
variable+=$value
will not always behave as intended if the variable is not typeset. If
it is typeset as an array for example, you can depend on it appending
"$value" to the list. Otherwise it might try to add it as an integer
or append it as a string, depending on it's value.
Regards,
Vincent
--
Vincent Stemen
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