> [...] suggests that you believe that > foo=bar > is a command in sh. It isn't, and never has been.
Perhaps not in some technical sense. But it is a command in the sense of "something that can be typed interactively, or otherwise given where a command-line is expected, to do something useful". It sounds to me as though you're drawing a distinction between variable assignments and "command"s in the sense of...I'm not sure what, maybe conceptually running a program? I'm having trouble defining "command" in a way that makes "cd" a command (one of the few commands that _can't_ be implemented as a separate executable) but "foo=bar" not, except by arbitrary fiat. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML [email protected] / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
