Shell Programming and Scripting

I did not know you could legally change shell inside a function... I will have to try it.

The first thing i notice is a problematic usage of the "print"-statement. The reason is, that "print" awaits one or more parameters and is satisfied with getting one. That may - depending on the variables contents - lead to unexpected results, like in this example:

Code:

function write_log
{
     print $*
}

# ======= first example ======
a="hello there"
b="; exit"

write_log $a $b

# ====== second example ======
a="-u2"
b="hi there"

write_log $a $b

In the first example the script will terminate because the expanded line reads "print hello there ; exit" and "exit" is a shell command. In the second example "-u2" is interpreted as an option to print instead of printable text. Maybe something along these lines has happened and is responsible for the coredump?

btw. the solution to the print-command being a bit ambigous is:

Code:

print - "$*"

After the dash everything is considered to be printable text and the double quotes around the variable take care that only one parameter is given to print.

I hope this helps.

bakunin