Shell Programming and Scripting

however it doesn't work as described in the quote..... the following code does not work (arguments passed via script1 are ignored):

Script1:
......
. doSomething parm1 parm2
..........

Script2 => doSomething:
if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
echo "Usage: doSomehting parm1 parm2. Missing parameters. Aborting..."
exit 1
fi
$1 $2 # calling script $1 with parameter 2
........ #common error hanlding and more

Note1: If I wrote script2 as a function inside script1, it'd work fine- but I want script2 in a separate file so that many other scripts can use it without having the same code repeated in each of those scripts.
Note2: without operator "." it would work too, but I want script2 to be able to access /modify all the globals defined in script1 or any calling scripts.

Please help me again!!

Do you have "#!/bin/sh" or "#!/bin/bash" at the top?

You might try using bash instead of sh or vice versa.

What OS are you using?

Sorry I failed to get in & read/response a few times due to this forum server system being too busy.
OS- Sun Solaris & I'm required to write bourne shell script.
I have the line #!/bin/sh at the beginning of each of scripts.

If you are on Solaris then you also have the korn shell.

If the shell you are using does not support parameters in a source statement (if the shell does not support local then that would not surprise me) then I suggest you use a well choosen environment variable to pass the arguments.

Thank you for all the ideas- there are so many ways to solve a problem- if you know how;-) So ideas are always appreciated!
For this paticular script2 in conncern, I'm trying to do it differently- so that it doesn't have to update/access the variables in the calling scripts, and can be called directly (without sourcing) like this:
.....
doSomething parm1 parm2 parm3 .... #(passing some of the globals by adding more parameters)

We know this works;-)

Thank you again. I'm definitely learning from you:-)