On Fri, Oct 13, 2023 at 02:21:59PM -0400, Dale R. Worley wrote: > I was too lazy to chew through your example, but I coded an instance of > your description (above), and it does not show the dubious behavior that > you report. Specifically, > > $ bash -version > GNU bash, version 5.1.0(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) > ... > $ ls -l > total 20 > -rwxr-xr-x. 1 worley worley 112 Oct 13 14:14 inner > -rw-r--r--. 1 worley worley 113 Oct 13 14:13 middle > -rw-r--r--. 1 worley worley 123 Oct 13 14:12 outer
> $ cat inner > echo "Value in ./inner at the beginning: $OUTSIDE" > > unset OUTSIDE > > echo "Value in ./inner at the end: $OUTSIDE" I tried to understand the question as well. I got as far as realizing there were *three* scripts, not two as originally stated (your example agrees). But the OP's third script wraps around and re-invokes the first one. It's an ouroboros snake. Your example doesn't circle around in the same way, so I don't know how faithfully it's reproducing the original question. Once I realized there was an infinite loop of scripts eating their own tails, I gave up trying to understand any further. Too complicated for me.
