Re: Please educate me

[David Laight]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 04:13:03AM +0200, Sylvain Petreolle wrote:
> > noticed that
> >
> > for ac_dir in /sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH
> >
> > was splitting as
> > - /sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
> > - /bin
> > - /usr/bin
> >
> > etc.
>
> it's a normal behaviour, because for uses space as a
> separator, not ':' ??
> > Now, I know I can force it to work by changing the
> > for loop to 
> > for ac_dir in /sbin /usr/sbin $PATH

If you have:
    more_path="/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH"
you can do:
    save_ifs="$IFS"
    IFS=" :"
    for ac_dir in $more_path
    do
    	IFS="$save_ifs"
    	...
    done

So that the shell treats ':' as a separator when
parsing the output of the substitution.

David