Re: testing, counting, & arithmetic in general

[Paul Haahr <haahr@netcom.com>]

>   Is this how I'm expected to do this type of operation in es?
>     i=1
>     while {test $i -le 10} {
>         echo $i
>         i=`{expr $i + 1}
>     }
>   I.e. use "/bin/test" for conditionals (where ~ and ~~ aren't
> appropriate) and "/bin/expr" for arithmetic operations?

Since there's no builtin shell arithmetic, the usual answer is yes.

I usually do the operations you're doing there with lists, but I'm the
first to admit that's a hack.  For example,

  x = 1
  while {~ $x(10) ()} {
    echo $#x
    x = 1 $x
  }

Subtraction is done with things like ``x = $x(2 ...)''.

It's awkward, but it works well for small integers.

Another approach, which is used for creating a sequence of numbers
that might be large is using awk or (if you have it, seq)

  for (i = `{seq 212 451}) {
    echo $i
  }

Paul