es variables

[Jeffrey Rogers <jrogers@davros.ctron.com>]

I've been using es-0.9-alpha1 for a while now, with few problems (mostly 
dealing with working in an environment oriented toward sh/ksh/csh users).
I recently noticed something odd with variables:

For variables like LD_LIBRARY_PATH I sometimes have to append or prepend
something to the existing path, which is a : seperated list (just like
PATH).  I normally do this using
; LD_LIBRARY_PATH=newpart:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
which works fine if LD_LIBRARY_PATH is already set.  However, if it is
not set, then newpart:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH evaluates to nothing, instead of
"newpart:" as I expect.  Adding carats doesn't help.  It doesn't matter
if the variable is before or after the plaintext.  e.g.
; echo a$b $b^a a
a
; b=foo           
; echo a$b $b^a a
afoo fooa a
; 

Is this correct behavior?  Or is it a bug (perhaps only only local
version)?  If it is correct behavior,  I guess I could copy a PATH-style
settor for my original problem, but how would one normally go about
adding text to a variable that is possibly null?

I'm not on the list (yet; I just sent my subscription notice to
-request) but I didn't see anything like this in the list archive.

-J

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