Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi.
I am trying to populate an array using eval in the background within a function. So this function will create a list of 3 character directories from SVN and store in an array. I want to call this function when the script starts in the background unknown to the user.

The problem is that each item in the list is evaluated as a command instead of populating the SVNDIRS array and so I get the [command not found] error. I have tried it numerous ways with eval "echo...." and even redirecting error. Is there a way to do this that I have not tried? Thank you.

Code:

 
## - get the directory list
getDirs() {
    eval "SVNDIRS=$( svn ls "${REPO}" | sed 's/\/$//' | awk '{ if (length($0) == 3) { print }}' )  " &
}

I think you want:

Code:

set -A

set -A SVNDIRS $( svn ls "${REPO}" | sed 's/\/$//' | awk '{ if (length($0) == 3) { print }}' )

Test:

Code:

mkdir aa
mkdir ab
mkdir ac

set -A SNVDIRS $(ls -ad1 a*)
echo ${SNVDIRS[*]}
aa ab ac

Thank you for responding. However, i am trying to set the array variable in the background. Basically spawning a new shell and then reading that variable back in the current shell.