Large file system support in 2.1.2 (was Re: [Python-Dev] release for 2.1.2, plus 2.2.1...)

[Guido van Rossum]

> Okay, I'm totally confuggled now.  Let's boil this down.  Take this
> simple program:
> 
> -------------------- snip snip --------------------/tmp/foo.sh
> #! /bin/sh
> echo "OPT   = x${OPT}x"
> echo "CFLAGS= x${CFLAGS}x"
> -------------------- snip snip --------------------
> 
> and invoke it like:
> 
> % CFLAGS='one' OPT="two $CFLAGS" /tmp/foo.sh
> 
> What do you get?  What do you *expect* to get?  Am I boiling things
> down correctly?
> 
> On every system I've tested, the following output is what I get:
> 
> % CFLAGS='one' OPT="two $CFLAGS" /tmp/foo.sh
> OPT   = xtwo x
> CFLAGS= xonex
> 
> So, why should any of this work anywhere?  Should we ever expect $OPT
> to get the right value?

I haven't followed this, but from the above it appears that if you use
the form

VAR1=val1 VAR2=val2 ... program args

then all of val1, val2, ... are evaluated simultaneously using the
previous values of VAR1, VAR2, ... rather than left-to-right.

That's mildly surprising but not really upsetting to me.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)