Shell Programming and Scripting

I wrote a script in ksh93 (the OS is AIX 5.2, ML7), which failed to run. After some testing i found out why, but the answer is a bit dissatisfying. Look for yourself:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh93

# --------- Step Names
typeset achStepName[1]="foo"
typeset achStepName[2]="bar"
typeset achStepName[3]="fubar"
typeset achStepName[4]="test"

(( iCnt = 1 ))
while [ $iCnt -le ${#achStepName[@]} ] ; do
     print - $iCnt ${achStepName[$iCnt]}
     (( iCnt += 1 ))
done

exit 0

One would expect this to give a little table with the entries 1, 2, 3 and 4, just like the array is defined. Instead the output looks like:

Code:

1
2 bar
4 fubar
4 test

The reason is, that "foo" will somehow become the array element with the index "0"! After modifying the code to start the loop with iCnt=0 the output table looked like:

Code:

0 foo
1
2 bar
4 fubar
4 test

Has anybody a good explanation of this and a way to avoid that? Have I done something wrong?

To be honest, i can't believe a bug that big making it beyond alpha-testing, lest production.

bakunin