Re: piped functions cannot set variables

[Paul Jarc]

"Andrew Robb" <arobb@mva.co.uk> wrote:
> The shell function is not running in a separate process,

It is.  You can observe this with a system call trace.

> $$ gives the same value in the shell function as the calling
> process.

$$ also gives the same value inside an explicit subshell like
"(command)"; would you claim that no extra process is created then?
$$ doesn't mean what you think it means in these situations.  It is
initialized with getpid() when the shell first starts, and is not
reset for subprocesses.

You might make a feature request, saying that bash *shouldn't* fork a
subprocess when the pipeline element is a shell function.  But that is
indeed what it does currently.


paul