probs w/ '$' in envir. variables--eg, C$TEST

Eddie Kuns ekuns at zodiac.rutgers.edu
Tue Oct 10 04:08:04 AEST 1989


I'm having trouble with environment variables (cshell) with dollar signs in 
the middle of them.  This is on a MIPS/M120 computer with an R2000 processor.  
On signing on, I get the message "RISC/os  (UMIPS)  4.0".

The following sequence of commands fails:

setenv 'C$TEST' ~level3
man setenv

I get the message:
C$TEST=/usr1/user1/level3:  is not an identifier

and never see any text from the man page.  (I get the same error message when 
trying to execute any command, not just 'man'!)  I tried the same commands 
under Ultrix (on a DECStation) and on a Sun with no problems.  Does anyone 
have an idea how I can get around this "feature?"  (When I run a Fortran 
program that uses getenv to get the value of the variable, it works.)

Also, once this works, how can I use the value of this variable?  <cd $C$TEST> 
doesn't work!  (It tells me that "C" is an undefined variable.)  <cd $C\$TEST>
also doesn't work.  I've tried everything I can think of.  Is my only option 
to write a program that uses getenv() to get that value?  Is it possible to 
get this value in a shell script?

Why do I insist on putting dollar signs in the middle of environment 
variables?  Well, I'm porting a HUGE piece of software from VMS to UNIX.  This 
software is full of VMS logical names, most of which contain dollar signs in 
the middle!  It would be very painful to change all those logical names, so 
I'm trying to use environment variables as VMS logical names wherever 
possible.

Please respond to one of the below addresses.  The news program here seems to 
be unstable.  (It runs under VMS!)  I'll post a summary of replies if people
express a desire for it.

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