George Zeigler wrote: <snip>
separator character (e. g. TRANS="/usr/local/lib/trans/") which could be a link to the actual directory. What is TRANS? And what is this TRANS="usr/local/lib/trans" ? There is no /usr/local/lib/trans directory. And I've never linked a directory.
<snip>
Where do I set environment variables? I did the 'env' command. The manual has little about this.
TRANS here is a user-defined environment variable. To understand environment variables, you have to understand shell variables. Shell variable is a name that has a value associated with it. Shells (like bash) have several built-in shell variables (e.g. PATH, PS1 etc.), users can add their own by using the following syntax: varname=value (no whitespace around "=") This is exactly what that instruction about TRANS refered to. To use the value of a variable, precede its name by a dollar ($) sign (e.g. echo $PATH). The user-defined shell variables are not visible to subprocesses, i.e. the commands you execute. Only a special kind of shell variables called "environment variables" are visible to subprocesses. The built-in variables I refered to earlier are actually environment variables. To promote a shell variable to environment variable, you need to "export" it: export varname (export a shell variable) or export varname=value (define & export a shell variable) It is also possible to define environment variables visible to only a particular subprocess: varname=value command This way, varname becomes part of the environment of subprocess "command". To see all the shell & environment variables currently active: et This should list all the variables with their values. Hope that clears things for you. Nadeem -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/