Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4237 mails)

[Randall R Schulz <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anders,

On Wednesday 04 August 2004 11:50, Anders Johansson wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 August 2004 20:43, Dylan wrote:
> > On Wednesday 04 Aug 2004 19:33 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> > > ...
> > >
> > > Here documents are cool, but they make scripts harder to read and
> > > understand, so I avoid using them unless they're really necessary.
> >
> > What are 'here documents'?
>
> The format I used in my mail. Insanely useful. ...

Useful? Definitely. Insane? Perhaps. Insanely useful? Perhaps only to the 
insane...

Anyway, one of my favorite uses of here documents are for setting PATH and 
PATH-like variables (PATH, CDPATH, CLASSPATH, etc.):

export	PATH=`tr $'\n' ":" <<-endPATH
	.
	$HOME/bin
	/usr/local/bin
	/opt/cxoffice/bin
	/sbin
	/usr/sbin
	/bin
	/usr/bin
	/usr/X11R6/bin
	/opt/kde3/bin
	/opt/gnome/bin
	endPATH`

# Strip the trailing colon produced by the unavoidable
#  newline at the end of the here document

	PATH="${PATH%:}"



Randall Schulz