Shell Programming and Scripting

if /local/bin/wsname 2>/dev/null; then
    base="`/local/bin/wsname`"
    export base
fi

if [ -z "${base}" ]; then
    /local/bin/wsname 
    exit 1
fi

WSNAME="$base"/

if /local/bin/wsname 2>/dev/null; then         # run wsname discarding its err msgs and check the exit code; if 0 then
    base="`/local/bin/wsname`"                 # assign the output of wsname to the variable "base"
    export base                                # and export that
fi

if [ -z "${base}" ]; then                      # if base is not set
    /local/bin/wsname                          # run wsname again 
    exit 1                                     # and exit with error code
fi

WSNAME="$base"/                                # assign base's content, extended by a "/" (making up a directory entry?), to the WSNAME variable