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Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 09:36:35 -0700
From: Tom Vilot <tom@vilot.com>
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Subject: Re: my lame attempt at a shell script...
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Eric F Crist wrote:

> What is the point of the { } around some variables? 


It's not strictly necessary, except in some cases. i.e:

m=34

echo $m


You don't need it there.

But you would want it here:


f=/var/filename

fname=${f//name/name2}


It's when you need to differentiate the variable name from operations 
around it ... for want of a better explanation ....