New param "source environment"?

[Nicolas Williams]

I think I've mentioned/offered this before:

A new parameter whose purpose is to specify a file containing
<variable>=<value> pairs to be sourced into the current process'
environment. If the string value of this new parameter ends with a '|',
then the string value should be treated as a command whose output is to
be sourced into the environment.

This parameter would be useful to those of us who make much use of %()
environment variable substitution tokens.

This could have an application as a solution to the problem for which
Rune Henssel proposed adding "show to users" and "hide from users"
parameters. The solution using this 'source environment' paramter would
be similar to the one suggested by Dan Kaminsky, but simpler (no
intermediate temporary files would be needed; simply have a script
output a list of share names as the value to an environment variable
which is later interpolated into the value of the 'auto services'
parameter).

I see many more uses for this, of course.

Nico
--
Nicolas Williams	(x5220, Stamford, CT)
Stamford SysAdmin

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