Greg Wooledge wrote: > Jim Meyering wrote: > > Is there a moral here, other than to avoid using special variable names? > > Probably to prefer lower-case variable names. > > You've nailed it. Or more precisely, avoid all-upper-case variable names, > because they tend to collide with environment variables and special shell > variables. Any variable name with at least one lower-case letter should > be safe. > > There is an unfortunate long-lived bad habit that's floating around out > there, where people think they're supposed to use all-caps variable names > in shell scripts. That is not a good idea, and you've just stumbled upon > one of the many reasons why.
I always used to use upper case shell variable names too. (For example TMPDIR, but that collides with other behavior.) But due to the collision potential I have been trying to train myself out of that habit for the last few years. Now I always use lower case variable names. (For example tmpdir, which shouldn't collide.) So for this I would say the script should use lower case names instead of upper case names. Bob
