Hello all. This is my first post/question on this site.
I’m a new Systems Analyst with previous experience with BASH. Although now I'm using AIX, and I’m trying to get a feel for the Korn shell (for those of you that don’t know AIX only uses the KORN shell).
I hope I put this into the correct forum topic; if not I apologize!

I am trying to use a command substitution inside of a variable expression:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

cd ${1:-`pwd`}; pwd; ls -l

cd ${1:-.}; pwd; ls -l

I don't have access to an AIX machine right now, but I couldn't reproduce
the behavior you describe with ksh M-11/16/88i and M-12/28/93d on Solaris.

Could you execute the script like this and post the output?

/usr/bin/ksh -xv <script_name>

Your code works fine for me under Solaris.

Maybe try cd ${1:-$PWD} instead.

This probably has to do with CDPATH . in ksh it either needs to be empty or contain one empty path in order to be able to cd to a relative directory.

man ksh:

The shell variable CDPATH defines the search path for the direc-
tory  containing  arg.   Alternative  directory names are separated by a colon (:).  The default path is <null>
(specifying the current directory).  Note that the current directory is specified by a null  path  name,  which
can appear immediately after the equal sign or between the colon delimiters anywhere else in the path list.  If
arg begins with a / then the search path is not used.  Otherwise, each directory in the path  is  searched  for
arg.

Thanks for your SUPER quick response! Unfortunately I'll have to wait till Monday to try your suggestions.

radoulov: Thats a good idea!
Subbeh: I don't believe that PWD is considered an environment variable, but I'll have to double check.
Scrutinzer: Wasn't aware of CDPATH of being a variable either although I have yet to come across a reason to need it either.

Once again thanks and enjoy your weekends!

-Sidney

I figured out where the problem lies. "scd" is the script that I'm tring to run, and I'm in my home directory and enter:

 /usr/bin/ksh -xv scd /

+ cd /
pwd 
/ 
+ ls -l
Then my files.....

/usr/home/sydox

scd

/ 
files in root under ls -l....

This is an expected behavior. If you want to modify your current path, you should use a function or source the script:

. ./<script_name> <args>