Hi I'm supervising a practical in a Uni course. Have had a big week @ work and didn't get a chance to prep it as well as I'd like. Hence the problem.

Its on shell programming, and one of the students is trying to use a while loop to increment a counter.

However the shell seems to have some funky scope rules - when the while loop exits the value is reset to what it was prior to the loop opening.

Is this expected, and how do you get around it?

some tutor you are dont even know how to teach your own subject.

f*** you :) Being a tutor doesn't make you the subject's grand oracle!

In case anyone cared, its caused by spawning a subshell in old sh when you do file io that encompasses a while loop.

Have you tried google ?

how about at least telling us:

(1) the shell env? tcsh? csh? bash? ..
(2) the libreadline version?
(3) any other libraries or func repos used?
(4) a copy of the f***ing script?

f***ing hell.. i'm having a mind power zeta thought! how about defining your question like a good STUDENT would before asking us?

as bad as my tutors all those years ago.