Bug#383149: [Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#383149: Found the cause.

[Thomas Weber]

Hi, 

Am Donnerstag, den 17.08.2006, 21:53 +1000 schrieb John Dalton:
> Is it correct that existing values in the shell environment should 
> override the default values within mkoctfile?  

Probably yes; without this, you couldn't override (easily) mkoctfile's
defaults. 

The ${} construct only sets a variable if it's unset; the leading colon
(:) is necessary, because without it bash tries to execute the commands,
ie it executes /bin/sed in 
${SED="/bin/sed"}.



> I don't really understand what
> : ${variable="value"}
> is doing.  Can someone please explain it to me?

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/special-chars.html

Search for "provide" (there are two hits in the same place; the first
one is the case her).

	Thomas