Brian, No, it's not odd. It's correct.
This is a generic thing about how environment variables work and is in no way specific to the CLASSPATH variable (or any other PATH or pre-defined or built-in variable) nor is this specific or peculiar to Cygwin. When you execute a shell script such as the one you showed, a sub-process is created to run that script. Environment variables are inherited by all new child sub-processes. However, variables defined or changed in a sub-process are never passed back to the parent process that created the sub-process. The usual way to accomplish the sort of variable-setting you (appear to) want is to use the "source" command (or it's synonym, "."). This shell built-in causes the commands in the named script to be executed by the same shell that executed the "." or "source" command. Arguments are not passed in this case. You need to be a little careful with that variety of script. For example, invoking the "exit" command will cause your interactive shell to terminate. Good luck. Randall Schulz Mountain View, CA USA At 11:56 2002-10-02, Brian Rowe wrote: >Hello, >If I export CLASSPATH=blah on the command line it >works fine. If I write a shell program that sets the >CLASSPATH it won't set it! When I echo the value its >right from the script, but when its done the CLASSPATH >is not set. Any ideas on why this wouldn't work? > >#!/bin/sh >export CLASSPATH="C:\jdk\lib\tools.jar" > >Run that, then check echo $CLASSPATH at the command >line and CLASSPATH is the same. Odd? -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/