On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:23:00AM -0700, pjodrr wrote: > they call it "collapsing functions": > http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/howto/collapsing_functions
"The first time you run chatter(), the function redefines itself based on the value of verbose. Thereafter chatter doesn't check $verbose anymore, it simply is. Further calls to the function reflect its collapsed nature. If verbose is unset, chatter will echo nothing, with no extra effort from the developer." The problem with this is that you can't switch to the other function later. unset verbose chatter "$i" ... verbose=1 chatter "$j" Here, the first call to chatter blows away the test of $verbose, so the next time we call it, the fact that we've set verbose=1 is ignored. We're stuck in non-verbose mode forever.
