Re: [h-e-w] pb with the use of Merge

[Nat Goodspeed]

At 05:33 PM 5/5/2007, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > Typical usage in a bash script:
> > cd "$(find-workarea)"
> >    I recently had to write a .bat script (don't ask) in which I
> > wanted to use the same helper. Here's what I had to write:
> > for /f "usebackq" %%w in (`bash find-workarea`) do cd %%w
>
> I don't know what find-workarea does, but there probably are ways to
> use the more advanced features of `for /f' for this job without
> resorting to backticks, if you just dump the Bash script and do it
> straight in cmd.

  Possibly so. I already had the helper script in hand.

> The primary intent of `for /f' is to parse files,
> so if find-workarea does anything like that, you shouldn't need to
> resort to Bash.

  Yes. Perhaps it was unnecessarily distracting to illustrate with 
my specific helper script.
  The point I was trying to make is this. I very often want a shell 
script to perform the operation: "run this subcommand and capture its 
standard output in a variable for later use in the calling script."
  In earlier versions of the Windows command shell, there was no 
mechanism for this at all. While I'm pleased that they've added such 
support, it seems odd to me to graft it onto `for'. As you say, the 
primary intent of `for' is to loop, and the primary intent of `for 
/f' is to loop through files.
  Apologies for rambling so very far afield.