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Re: bug with empty path
- X-seq: zsh-workers 2532
- From: Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxx>
- To: zsh-workers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Zsh hackers list)
- Subject: Re: bug with empty path
- Date: Wed, 04 Dec 1996 10:00:21 +0100
- In-reply-to: "Zoltan Hidvegi"'s message of "Tue, 03 Dec 1996 17:57:58 MET." <199612031657.RAA25108@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Zoltan Hidvegi wrote:
> Peter Stephenson wrote:
> > The lines:
> > path=()
> > and
> > PATH=
> > have different effects: the first produces an empty path array, the
> > second a path with one blank element. This turns up in the following:
>
> I do not think it is a bug. Of course other shells couldn't set an empty
> path but zsh is better than that. The path is really an array and the PATH
> scalar is just a representation which has this inefficiency.
>
> One may want to use a really empty path sometimes which is best achieved
> with path=().
I see the point, but do you really want to try and explain this to the
average user? ``The PATH is sometimes empty, and sometimes really empty,
but only if you set it as an array; if it looks empty, it may be empty
or really empty; if it's empty but not really empty it pretends to be
set to the current directory...''
Besides which, when passed as an environment variable --- even down to another
zsh --- the only possibilities are either not having it set or an empty
PATH (which is therefore not really empty in the above sense).
Still, there's some confusion in having both $path and $PATH which is
probably unavoidable, so I can live with it.
--
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxx> Tel: +49 33762 77366
WWW: http://www.ifh.de/~pws/ Fax: +49 33762 77413
Deutches Electronen-Synchrotron --- Institut fuer Hochenergiephysik Zeuthen
DESY-IfH, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany.
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