Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 14:52:43 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>, Jon Hamilton <hamilton@pobox.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Unsetting exported environment variables? Message-ID: <19980719145243.A435@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <19980719141541.08251@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Sun, Jul 19, 1998 at 02:15:41PM %2B1000 References: <19980719122446.M957@freebie.lemis.com> <199807190310.UAA24713@hub.freebsd.org> <19980719141541.08251@welearn.com.au>
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On Sunday, 19 July 1998 at 14:15:41 +1000, Sue Blake wrote: > On Sat, Jul 18, 1998 at 10:12:18PM -0500, Jon Hamilton wrote: >> >> In message <19980719122446.M957@freebie.lemis.com>, Greg Lehey wrote: >>> On Saturday, 18 July 1998 at 21:42:00 -0500, Jon Hamilton wrote: >>>> >>>> In message <19980719103309.J957@freebie.lemis.com>, Greg Lehey wrote: >>>> >>>> I know you already found the answer; I'm just marveling that you asked >>>> the list in the first place. >>> >>> Man pages are good for finding something if you know what you're >>> looking for. I never thought there would be an "unset" command, so I >>> would have needed to read the entire man "page" (68 pages in the case >>> of bash), which is rather inefficient. I *did* scan it, but I thought >>> it would be quicker to ask. It was. >> >> You're just being lazy; I am certain your problem solving skills are really >> much better than that. > > Haven't you noticed? He does these things occasionally so that we newbies > won't feel so bad all the times that we miss what's obvious to everyone > else. Not only does it make us feel better, it gives us an occasional > opportunity to understand a question enough to join in the hunt for the > answer. Given enough time, I might have even been able answer this one. I > was already up to page 3 when someone who should have known better blurted > out the answer, which of course is on the last page. Thanks, Sue. That's part of the story. I could have asked -hackers, where, paradoxically, I'd expect less of this kind of reply, but I thought there would be an easy answer, and so I sent it to -questions. The background is that when I learnt the Bourne shell, there *was* no unset command, and we just accepted that you couldn't unset variables once you had set them (or you had to use csh). Because of this, I was expecting a different solution for the problem at hand, though I did superficially check the man page first. Still, I only know one person who claims he knows it all, and *he* doesn't convince me. > I was somewhat amused that not too long after asking your question, > you went and RTFM'd wizkid11@xnet.com when he asked a question about > a serial patch. I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. Well, no, there's not much comparison here. wizkid11 picked up a document from my web site which explained that there were two different patches, that they only applied to specific versions of FreeBSD. In his message, he just said (effectively) "It doesn't work". On the same web site you should all have read (http://www.lemis.com/questions.html): 6. Specify as much information as possible. This is a difficult area, and we need to expand on what information you need to submit, but here's a start: * If you get error messages, don't say ``I get error messages'', say (for example) ``I get the error message 'No route to host'''. * If your system panics, don't say ``My system panicked'', say (for example) ``my system panicked with the message 'free vnode isn't'''. * If you have difficulty installing FreeBSD, please tell us what hardware you have. In particular, it's important to know the IRQs and I/O addresses of the boards installed in your machine. * If you have difficulty getting PPP to run, describe the configuration. Which version of PPP do you use? What kind of authentication do you have? Do you have a static or dynamic IP address? What kind of messages do you get in the log file? Having read this, of course, I can see omissions, so I've updated it. Take this opportunity to be the first to read it. wizkid11 didn't mention any of this. I asked him to state what he was running, and which patch he had attempted to apply. > Now, Jon, it's your turn to do your duty for the morale of the keen > beginners. When you do, it'd better be convincing because now you know that > I'll know what you're up to. I'll be watching and waiting :-) Go for it! Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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