On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 02:49, Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I don't see this as a surprise. It's how you return values from functions
> in bash. Pick a global variable (r, ret, whatever you want) and stuff the
> return value into that. You can even declare your "r" locally somewhere
> so that the value never propagates up higher than that point in the call
> chain.
>
I can understand this but I've never written code like this. Will try it
later.
>
> For example:
>
> # Return random number from 0 to ($1-1) in variable "r"
> rand() {
> local max=$((32768 / $1 * $1));
> while (( (r=$RANDOM) >= max )); do :; done
> r=$((r % $1))
> }
>
> foo() {
> local r
> rand 42
> ... use $r ...
> }
>
> foo
> ... we don't see "r" here because it was scoped only within foo & its kids
> ...
>
>
