[etoys-dev] Re: Etoys-to-go goes AWOL?

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 12.08.2009, at 03:02, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:

> On Tuesday 11 Aug 2009 9:06:44 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> But the var expansion magic is unnecessarily clever IMHO, less
>> readable than being explicit.
> I didn't mean to use any special magic. The idiom
> : ${SQUEAK_USERDIR:=$HOME/.etoys}
> dates back to original Bourne shell and is portable across all shells.

Maybe. I call executing an anonymous command with an argument that as  
a side-effect creates and assigns a variable, but only if the variable  
did not exist before, "magic".

> See sh man page for "assign default values". Anyway, I will leave it  
> to you.
>
>> Besides, written like this, the
>> variables would not be exported to the environment.
> Nice catch!
> $ export SQUEAK_USERDIR SQUEAK_SECUREDIR
>
> Subbu


I'm for leaving it like it is. It's even a line less ;)

- Bert -