Pierre Gaston wrote:
> Since you are already using global variables, why not simply use a
> couple more for the return values?
>
---
Because a subshell cannot access the global variables of the
parent.
The only 'hack' I came up with overnight for a quick & dirty, is
to pass back a "blob" along with the 3 return values the function normally
returns, which the parent will 'eval' in the parent context (contain
'export XXX=value' or 'alias xxx=/path' statements. The purpose of this
was to pre-verify the needed external utilities the script would be using
-- their paths and their existence so the script would be less likely to
fail non-deterministically later on.
